Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan for sharing his time. I thank the committee's Chairman and other members for the important work they did at a critical time for this country. I also thank the officials who helped them in that work, including the compiling of such a detailed and good report.

I wish to make four points about the report. First, it is important that the committee worked concurrently with our experience of the pandemic. For major events such as the one we are still experiencing, we need at-the-time reporting, investigating and recording, but we also need work that reflects on what happened after some time has passed. In this case, the first piece of work has been done by the committee.

From my experience of the banking inquiry, that key witnesses had different recollections was interesting. I am not just referring to key events that happened in the course of the banking crisis and the bailout. Rather, they could not remember the sequence of meetings and who might have been present for certain decisions. Sometimes, they had a difference of memory on the decisions that were taken. That happens. With the passage of time, memories change. As such, it might be useful to conduct an oral investigation now with those who were key players when decisions were taken during the first phase of the pandemic. I was a Minister in that Government, and I have to jog my memory to try to remember the sequence of certain events and decisions from only six months ago. Such a recording would be useful - it would not be for publication, or perhaps it would be published years from now - to better inform future decision makers.

Second, I did not get to follow every committee meeting, so something was not clear to me from reading the report, that is, the extent to which the committee examined the structure of the State's response to the pandemic. I do not mean the decisions that were taken, but the forums or structures within which they were taken. There was a Government decision on the best way to deal with emerging crises like pandemics, acts of terrorism and severe weather events, namely, the National Emergency Co-ordination Group, NECG. I have spoken and written about this issue previously. It is worth understanding now why we did not go with the NECG model, which was the recommended, tried and tested model, and instead went with a different model for making decisions. By the way, this is not a criticism of what we did at the time. The decision making process worked well then. However, it would be useful to know why we did not go with the prepared response, as it were. It would be useful to ask whether that response would be a better structure for those future decisions that must be taken in this pandemic. That would be a good piece of work to do.

Third, why is the committee no longer sitting? We are still living through Covid-19 and trying to react to and manage the pandemic in our society. Our citizens are still suffering not just the direct consequences of the virus, but also from some of the decisions we have taken to protect them from that virus. Why was the committee not sitting when the Government introduced the new five level structure for dealing with the pandemic so that it could have a proper and detailed look at the structure? Why is the committee not sitting now so that it could undertake a proper examination of potential alternatives to managing Covid into 2021? Why is it not doing some of the heavy lifting that needs to be done in terms of preparing us for what we hope will be a freer life post level 5 lockdown? I understand that the committee did important work and reported on same in a timely manner, which was excellent, but there is no reason for it not to be still sitting and asking some of these questions concurrently with the pandemic so that we could have the at-the-time, on-the-record reporting and investigation.

Fourth, I wish to make a point relating to one or two of the recommendations in the report. Some of them refer to the inquiries Act or to making an inquiry under that Act. I made this point in a separate forum this week. As someone who has experience of the Act, given that I was on the banking inquiry under it, it needs significant amendments.

Work would need to be done to amend the Act so that a future inquiry would not run the risks the banking inquiry ran at certain points, such as not completing its work. Amending the inquiries Act is not a small piece of work. I imagine, in particular given the current working arrangements, it would take six to 12 months. If inquiries are to be held under the Act in the future into things that have happened over the course of the past 12 months, that work should be done so that people can be prepared to sit on those inquiries in the future.

See this speech in context