Longford Leader columnist Mattie Fox: Looking at what really matters through the prism of coronavirus
So at long last, two weeks behind the signs, society is forced into first place, as the economy is forced - screaming - into second. Second to human care, second to corporate thinking, second to pubs, second to hotels, second to banks, sport, and tourism.
Second to every busy lobbyist who canvasses the government.
Of course cancelling events such as the rugby is a hard decision to make , but unfortunately the decision was made too late to allow people from Italy time to cancel flights. The Italians started arriving into Ireland last Friday, with several on Thursday.
Ireland’s Government, as usual, couldn’t make the decision.
The Business Post predicted on Sunday that up to 1.9 million potentially could be infected by the corona virus eventually.
Paul Reid head of HSE had to agree. 1.9 million.....in Ireland??
That’s 39% of the entire population!!!
That’s like America (pop 325m) having 130 million infected; the UK (pop 66.5m) having 25 million infected; Italy (pop 60m) having 23.4 million. In Italy they already have 16 million of the population in lockdown.
Ireland was lagging way behind in this crisis.
Yet, this morning Monday 9th March, we still had Simon Harris - for whom one can only feel genuine sympathy because he seems to be a nice person - once again trotting out the government line as recently as the morning news on RTÉ.
He didn’t know enough to stay off the news, that’s how compliant he is towards government spin.
Of course he said it’s the HSE’s advice that dictates this attitude.
However, the HSE have no mandate to shut down events.
Oh dear me.
If we’re not careful more than half of hospital staff will be compromised by this very infectious disease, and for which we have yet to find an antidote. Could take up to eighteen months.
Nobody wants to be alarmist, but no commentator worth his or her salt could refrain from letting the public know, in the harshest terms, of the potential figures in this rapidly creeping infection.
Maybe that will do a power of good for our country, and it might even bring us back, somewhat, to our former reputation for caring, and looking after the elderly, and thinking seriously about the Health Service, which has thousands of great nurses and doctors.
Maybe it’s time for Ireland to row back on our rush to modernity.
It might be advantageous to recognise that we are too small a country to be trying to keep abreast of others who have a massive GDP, by comparison.
If ever Ireland got a wake up call, this is it.
It’s time to start caring for our elderly, having properly run hospitals and a healthy system that is a warm and welcoming space to work for newly qualifying nurses and doctors. Instead, they are immediately emigrating.
They know what the Health Service is like, here. and they want no part of it.
The housing meanwhile is languishing in neglect.
I don’t blame Eoghan Murphy, the acting Minister, because it’s not him who holds the purse strings.
Paschal Donohue is the Minister for Finance.
Inevitably, he decides, though I noted him recently saying “we must be more attentive…. to what people say”. “We have listened to the voters”!
Too late, unfortunately for anything meaningful to be done yet, with a skeleton Government, including three ministers who were not even re- elected.