CETA is a toxic trade deal. It's bad for the environment, workers, farming, food standards and sovereignty & must not be ratified

My article in todays Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/eu-canada-trade-deal-plays-into-the-hands-of-big-business-it-must-not-be-ratified-39864514.html 

Some highlights:

....."The move to deregulate financial markets was one of the main causal factors of the global financial crash. Regulation, however inconvenient to big businesses, has a crucial role in democracy and economic stability. It provides safeguards against exploitation and protects hard earned rights of the most vulnerable in society....."

Here’s why TDs should vote against CETA on Tuesday.

Climate Change:  The most dangerous aspect of CETA is the Investment Court System (ICS) which allows foreign investors to sue governments for enacting policies that interfere with their profits. For example, signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement in Europe are required to change laws in favour of renewable energy. However, under ICS foreign investors could legally challenge that legislation. Unlike CETA, the Paris Agreement is not legally binding. Efforts to reduce fossil fuel extraction and use could be undermined by industry investors being afforded protections not extended to the environment and public health.  

​Farming: Canada has lower production standards and allows carcasses to be cleaned using chemicals such as chlorine. As a result, Canada produces meat 60% cheaper than the EU. Increasing Canadian imports could therefore significantly impact European farmers, particularly already beleaguered Irish Beef farmers, who would struggle to compete on price and scale with Canadian counterparts. Which is probably why The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association rejected CETA in 2017.

Sovereignty and democracy: Article 30.9 of CETA states. “In the event that this Agreement is terminated, the provisions of Chapter Eight (Investment) shall continue to be effective for a period of 20 years after the date of termination of this Agreement in respect of investments made before that date”. Our planet can’t wait 20 years and our children won’t forgive us for locking them into this disastrous deal.

It’s no wonder former UN expert on human rights, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas referred to “corporate courts” as “an attack on the very essence of sovereignty and self-determination”. He warned that some 608 arbitration awards overrode national law and hindered States in the sovereign determination of fiscal and budgetary policy, labour, health and environmental regulation, and have had adverse human rights impacts..."

"Food safety: The EU’s “precautionary principle”, whereby the onus is on food producers to prove that chemicals used are safe, will be deemed a “barrier to trade”, permitting a common regulatory mechanism, where any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. Canada has weaker food safety and labelling standards than the EU, and industrial agriculture more heavily dependent on pesticides and GM crops. CETA also allows Canadian and US multinationals to undermine rules concerning cloning, GM crops and growth hormones.

 The government has no mandate to ratify this disastrous deal. In July 2017, Over 80 Irish civil society groups, including unions, farmers, environmentalists and business owners, called for the rejection of the deal by the Irish Government. The coalition united in opposition to CETA as a “bad trade deal” that will compromise laws to protect health, food standards, farmers’ interests, the environment, worker’s rights, and the rule of law.

 Rushing through ratification now, under the cover of coronavirus chaos, without proper debate and public engagement debases democracy.

 In 2017, Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan warned that the ICS would give big business power over governments and courts and that the deal offered no environmental protections. He said, “The way it was centred around lobbying by big corporate interests rather than the public interest is wrong”.

Thus far, the Green Party has done the bidding of its neo-liberal coalition partners on matters of social justice, ostensibly keeping its powder dry for climate justice. Notwithstanding the fact that the two are inextricably linked, if the Greens vote to ratify CETA, it begs the question: what is the point of the Green Party if it’s just propping up a government that continuously puts multinational interests before those of our planet and country?"

Pitting "lives vs livelihoods" is a false dichotomy & will cost us far more than Christmas

My article in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-could-be-having-a-holly-jolly-christmas-if-we-had-only-closed-the-borders-39824390.html

Extract:

"It’s a damning indictment that, in the midst of a public health crisis, there are more spin doctors in Leinster House (64) than there are public health doctors in the country (60). With the former briefing against the latter in the media, our jaded public health heroes have been forced into taking strike action.

Thanks to Leo Varadkar’s Trumpian style trashing of NPHET, the country went into lockdown 2 too late, allowing infections to spread exponentially resulting in a longer lockdown. And, even though cases are still too high to safely re-open restaurants and gastro-pubs, we’re opening them anyway.

For the avoidance of doubt, our government is not only going against NPHET’s advice but that of the EY auditors they employed to undermine NPHET. A University of Warwick study found that the “Eat out to help out” policy accelerated the UK’s resurgence and was lambasted as “a policy failure based on short-termism”.

So, in whose interest is the government acting? Not the SMEs stuck in a purgatorial cycle of lockdowns, not our beleaguered health professionals, not the workers coerced by unscrupulous employers to return to the office, not essential low paid workers exposed to greater risk, not the 82% of people who, according to last week’s CSO poll, said Level 5 restrictions are “appropriate or should be stronger”.

That just leaves the lobbyists, who have been allowed to frame the government’s narrative. Such as, pitting lives vs livelihoods, which is a false dichotomy. It’s a manipulation tactic invoked by lobbyists and politicians in order to achieve their vested interests. The pandemic is both a public health and economic crisis so public health strategies that reduce the spread of coronavirus also safeguard livelihoods. The economy cannot function if a substantial proportion of infected workers are off sick, sometimes indefinitely with long-Covid (self-isolating nurses are being asked to return to work due to staffing shortages).

The OECD’s Secretary General said, “The first thing we’ve got to do is beat the enemy: the virus. It’s a false dilemma to say you have to choose between lives and livelihoods because the sooner you deal with the question of lives the better you will do on livelihoods”

Our World in Data have Compared the COVID-19 death rate with the latest GDP data indicating that countries that have managed to protect their population’s health in the pandemic have also protected their economy.

SMEs have been poorly served by ISME. In March, their Australian counterpart lobbied their government to follow scientific advice and pursue a zero-Covid approach in order to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It worked. Being Covid free, everything is open domestically - at full capacity- and small business are thriving. In contrast, ISME is attacking NPHET, oblivious to the fact that its members’ businesses are being sacrificed at the altar of the aviation lobby in particular. It’s like turkey’s voting for Christmas.

---

The “personal responsibility” chestnut is also straight out of the lobbyist’s handbook, Chapter 1: “Blame shifting”. It ignores the absence of power and choice of our vulnerable and abdicates the state’s duty to protect its citizens. For example, our government’s lack of mandatory quarantine meant that one person returning from holiday abroad was free to circulate, infecting 56 other people, including 10 households and a sports team.

No amount of personal responsibility can mitigate the ineptitude and indolence of a dysfunctional government. The vaccine can prevent people getting sick but we don’t yet know if it can prevent infection. Without a mitigation strategy, we’re facing several more months of restrictions.

Choosing to put their cronies’ interests before those of everyone else, Messrs Martin, Varadkar and Ryan have hastened an inevitable third wave in which far more than Christmas will be lost."

"What was it like to be an evacuee Grandma"?

RIP Grandma Edythe 💓

I was Peter Sutcliffe's therapist. The misogyny that killed so many women then still exists today

My article in todays Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/i-was-peter-sutcliffes-therapist-his-case-file-made-me-sick-i-owed-it-to-his-victims-to-understand-what-he-did-to-them-39753437.html

The women of colour that got Biden over the line have earned their rightful seats at his top table

 My article in today's Irish Independent 👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/why-women-of-colour-need-to-take-a-bow-centre-stage-before-curtain-comes-down-on-joe-bidens-presidency-39741703.html

Donald Trump conceding defeat is like Hannibal Lecter agreeing to be sectioned. He will not go peacefully. It seems fitting that the final scene of the Trump horror show was set in a seedy parking lot where a press conference was held between a crematorium and a sex shop called “Fantasy Island” (I’m not kidding). It would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic.

 

Trump’s four year tyrannical reign inflicted wounds that will linger long after the stench of his rhetoric has dissipated into the choke damp ether. His list of ignominies is longer than an Al Capone charge sheet but the fact that 240,000 coronavirus deaths and the separation (and caging) of 666 migrant children from their families did not result in a landslide victory for Joe Biden, should ring alarm bells for the Democrats.

 

During the agonising count, I tuned into RTE’s Drivetime which appeared to have been temporarily hijacked by Fox News to promulgate far right, white supremacist conspiracy theories on an unsuspecting Irish audience. Platforming Steve Bannon was not RTE’s finest hour. This is a man charged with fraud and whose podcast was removed from YouTube and permanently banned by twitter after he appeared to call for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci. His sycophantic RTE interview is still available online but it really shouldn’t be.

 

Fast forward, a few more days of waiting and counting before Joe Biden emerges triumphant. Relief was my over-riding feeling. He won, but by the skin of his teeth and he couldn’t have done it without the army of women of colour that lent him their backing when progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders, exited the Democratic presidential race.

 

Kamala Harris, who made history as not just the first female, but the first black female, Vice-President elect, acknowledged these women in her victory speech. She praised the “black women who are too often overlooked but who have proved to be the backbone of our democracy”.  Women like Stacey Abrams, who was instrumental in making Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years. Abrams mobilised a coalition of grassroots organisers in predominately minority communities, registering 800,000 new voters in Georgia alone. Fair Fight, the organisation Abrams created to combat voter suppression also helped Biden win in Wisconsin and other key swing states.

 

Black women like Cori Bush, a nurse and single mother whose own experience of homelessness spurred her to mobilise her community to feed and shelter those abandoned by the state. Her people-powered campaign resulted in Bush becoming Missouri’s first black congresswoman. 

 

And there’s the self-styled “Squad” of four congresswomen of colour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Shunned by the Democratic Party machine, they all secured their second terms campaigning on Medicare for all, a Green New Deal and racial justice. They   were chosen by communities to represent their interests, not those of corporate sponsors. Their tireless advocacy was rewarded at the ballot box.

How did the President of the United States, Donald Trump, greet these inspirational young congresswomen of colour (two of whom are Muslim) to the house when first elected in 2018? By tweeting they should, “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”, despite all but one being born in the US. Omar, a Somalian refugee, has been a US citizen for two decades. 

 

Ocasio-Cortez, who has 10 million twitter followers, used her social media savvy to mobilise and energise the grassroots activism that produced large turnouts in Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia for Biden’s win. She acknowledged the uphill battle to convince non-voters in disaffected communities to register and then vote having felt betrayed by previous Democratic administrations.

Many had not forgotten nor forgiven Barack Obama who, in return for gifting him their votes, bailed out banks that then repossessed their homes. At the end of his presidency, unemployment figures for Black Americans remained double that of their white counterparts (8 per cent) and it was during the Obama-era that the Black Lives Matter movement was born in protest against the killing of black people by police officers.

By 2016, Obama, with the help of Hilary Clinton, had crushed the most crucial weapon in the Democratic electoral armoury: Hope. Paving the way for Trump’s politics of hate to fill the void.

The US far right are not going anywhere. If Biden fails to harness the hope that an army of working class women of colour awoke to secure his victory, another, more malignant, polished incarnation of Trump will be waiting in the wings, ready to detonate a dirty bomb of bigotry. It will make the last four years seem like a sepia tinted Shirley Temple movie.

Teachers' unions are right to insist on WHO Covid-19 safeguards in schools

My article in today's Independent👇 

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-have-committed-to-wrong-course-of-action-on-schools-its-time-for-a-rethink-39684402.html

Biggest ever budget did little to close the gaping chasm between rich and poor

My article in todays Irish Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/biggest-ever-budget-did-little-to-close-the-gaping-chasm-between-rich-and-poor-39639499.html

Internal lockdowns are futile if we leave the back door of foreign travel wide open

My article in today's Irish Independent

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/our-lockdowns-efforts-seem-futile-while-back-door-of-foreign-travel-is-wide-open-39587737.html

When we cancelled our trip to the UK this summer, my child took it on the chin. He pined for his British grandma, but travelling to the country with the highest coronavirus death rate in the world at the time, would have jeopardised the hard won gains of lockdown.

Like most people, we heeded Dr Tony Holohan’s warning that the reintroduction of foreign travel was a "major threat," increasing the risk of a second-wave of Covid-19. With the front door of domestic lockdown largely secured however, the back door of foreign travel was left wide open. Tourism into Dublin Port trebled from just 7,165 in May to 23,972 in August, unabated even after a resurgence of new infections was attributed to foreign travel from countries, including Britain.  

 Whilst the EU banned flights from the worst coronavirus hotspots including the US, they enjoy unfettered access to our beleaguered shores. Even as warnings grew of American tourists openly flouting quarantine, rather than tightening restrictions, our government weakened them further. Cases increased, contact tracers became overwhelmed but, rather than stemming the flow of imported infections by closing external borders, our government shut internal borders instead.

 On the day three counties were put into lockdown, I spoke to a demoralised Garda friend at a checkpoint. “I’m policing the movements of Irish citizens while tourists can roam freely - no questions asked”. The next day, my son counted 12 UK campervans on a short stretch of road and said, “How can you restrict your movements for 14 days with 3 kids and a dog in a campervan”? Bottom lip wobbling (missing grandma) he added, “It’s not fair”.

Countries, such as New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea, that have pursued a zero-Covid approach by closing their borders have opened up everything else, resuming normal lives, mitigating damage to their economies and preventing avoidable deaths. This is not only a legitimate, but necessary, biosecurity response to protect citizens against a deadly disease.

 As Tomas Pueyo wrote in the New York Times, countries that opened their arms to neighbours too soon “got infected in the hug”.

For months, Leo Varadkar warned that mandatory quarantine might be illegal, despite the WHO’s guidance stating, “Quarantine is included within the legal framework of the International Health Regulations (2005)”. Having wasted two vital months, Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, admitted that mandatory quarantine wasn’t illegal after all but declined to enforce it anyway. On 9 august, when 3 counties were placed in lockdown, Donnelly asked our elderly to go back into quarantine essentially (some never left) promising that his Department would prepare a plan to restrict non-essential travel from countries with high rates of coronavirus. Almost two months later, no plan has emerged. Our vulnerable remain in hiding.

 So why does our government persist with this purgatorial cycle of political paralysis? Incompetence is the obvious front runner, but the elephant in the room is undoubtedly the behemothic aviation lobby. Ubiquitous in the media, irrespective of the question, respondents invariably deploy the old “2%” decoy.

On 2 July, Stephen Donnelly announced that new cases from international travel had gone up from 2% to 17% in the previous week. On 20 July it went up to 21%, yet ministers continue to claim that “only 2%” of infections are related to foreign travel. The government dashboard shows a flat-line trajectory, indicating that it hasn’t been updated since April. Given this dubious data is injudiciously invoked by the aviation lobby as a proverbial “dead cat”, I asked the HSE for a breakdown on how it was established? No explanation has been forthcoming.

Given resource stricken contact tracers only go back two days, it’s highly likely that foreign travel goes undetected, captured later under “community transmission”, which basically means “unknown”. A statistician acquaintance argues that, since coronavirus was originally imported from overseas in February, foreign travel actually accounts for 100% of cases in Ireland.

NPHET has repeatedly warned that the importation of cases from people travelling to Ireland from other countries would cause a second wave. Dr Ronan Glynn advised that mandatory quarantine should be put in place for all people travelling into Ireland from abroad — regardless of whether the country is on the green list. If that’s “unworkable”, he said, Ireland should introduce a ban on all non-essential travel to countries where the virus is highly prevalent, such as the US.

 Instead, in a sop to Ryanair, Leo Varadkar removed the deterrent of “non-essential” travel relating to the risible “green list” in September. This was a key contention in Ryanair’s legal action against the government’s pandemic travel advice and despite losing the case on Friday, Ryanair was gifted this concession anyway. Encouraging overseas holidays in the midst of a global pandemic smacks of state sponsored hedonism, underwritten by our jaded health and essential workers.

 

Coronavirus, unlike fawning governments, cannot be bullied, bribed or blackmailed into submission. As long as borders remain open, the rest of society faces a relentless, excruciating, futile cycle of persecutory lockdowns only to “open” again - at 50% capacity. All the while looking over our shoulder as the virus circulates within our communities like a silent assassin.

Last week, I sat with my sobbing son watching his beloved grandma’s funeral streamed from the UK and I felt his agonising loss and his sacrifice, made all the harder for knowing that it was squandered.

Anti-Traveller vitriol is socially acceptable in Ireland but let's call it what it is - racism

My article in today's Irish Independent 👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/anti-traveller-vitriol-is-socially-acceptable-here-but-lets-call-it-what-it-is-racism-39502475.html

When I was 15, I volunteered to teach literacy to Traveller children after school. That’s where I met Josephine, whose ensuing friendship gave me the gift, privileged and painful though it was, to walk in another girl’s shoes.

Strictly speaking, they were slippers, which I wore inside the caravan Josephine shared with her parents and four siblings. Her grandmother was often there too, imparting knowledge and love of her Traveller heritage through story telling. I sat for hours listening to her tales, hanging on every word.

I lost contact with Josephine, but every-time I hear racist anti-Traveller rhetoric and reports of attacks on the community, I think of her. So when a house in Galway, earmarked for a Traveller family was set alight this week, I thought, what if that’s Josephine’s family?

What if the children who were counting the sleeps before moving to their new home were hers? How would she explain, for example, that local councillor, Noel Larkin, went on radio, not to sympathise with the Traveller family, but to demand consultation for residents who “have genuine fears for their own property”? Adding, “Ramming a family into an area will cause upset to the people there”.

Thugs intimidating builders, blockading homes with silage bales in the dead of night and arson resulting in actual destruction of property, is not upsetting? But a young family with children seeking a safe, secure home pose “genuine fears for property”?  

Prejudice is underpinned by fear and ignorance. It’s not the responsibility of the marginalised to educate their oppressors. The only thing that Mr Larkin and the people on whose behalf he purports to speak, knows about their new neighbours is their ethnicity. Therefore, the fear he speaks of is predicated on hackneyed stereotypes and poisonous prejudice.

As an elected representative, Mr Larkin knows that to consult with residents before allocating housing to Travellers would be discriminatory. Galway City Council made that clear to fellow anti-Traveller agitator, Noel [Golfgate] Grealish, when he also demanded community consultation regarding the same burnt out property. If these men were demanding consultation before allocating social housing to Jews or Black people, it would be called out for what it is: Racist. It’s beyond time this country spoke anti-Traveller racism by its name and strengthened the law against hate crime to combat it.

Burning houses allocated to Travellers is not new in Ireland. Last year, an elderly Traveller couple in Cork had their caravan burnt out, destroying all their possessions, including their pets. In Tipperary, vandals targeted a house assigned to Travellers and in February 2013, a house earmarked for Travellers in Donegal, was wrecked in an arson attack.

What’s particularly disturbing to me is the perception that vitriol against Travellers is socially acceptable. Comments such as, “The people who did that deserve a medal”, “The travellers would’ve burned down the house if they didn’t do it.” and "Pity the Travellers weren't in there," are alarmingly commonplace online.

Scanning Travellers’ social media accounts, the mental health impact of the constant deluge of tacitly accepted racism is palpable, as captured in this comment: “I honestly can't take anymore. My mental health is suffering from all the racism I am seeing against my community”. It’s little wonder that suicide in Travellers is 6 times that of the general population and accounts for 11% of all deaths. Such relentless hatred would not be tolerated if targeted at any other ethnic group in the country.

On Tuesday, a 9 year old boy, who happens to be a Traveller, returned to school for the first time in six months to be greeted with this from another child:  “No-one likes k******s, that’s why that house was burnt down”.

Shielding our children against the emotional impact of coronavirus is hard enough without burdening them with the additional psychological trauma of racism. That any child is subjected to this hate, in Ireland, in 2020, is a national disgrace. Ireland’s Human Rights and Equality Commission reported in October that, “Persistence of systemic institutional racism against Travellers and the continued and widespread existence within Irish society of discriminatory attitudes towards Travellers remain among the most significant areas where the State is failing to meet its [UN] obligations” to eliminate racial discrimination.

Dehumanising Travellers and portraying them as “other” and evil, desensitises us to their distress and makes the conditions for discrimination and oppression possible. When we have limited contact with people who are different to us, we become susceptible to the shorthand of stereotypes which is mitigated by seeking out friendships beyond our comfort zones.

When you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes/slippers, their pain becomes your pain, their joy becomes your joy. When I stood up for Josephine in school, she said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. If you’re reading this Josie, know that your fight is still my fight and that I stand with you, your family and your kind, compassionate community.

It's #Schoolgate not #Golfgate we need to focus on now

My article in tomorrow's Irish Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/reopening-of-schools-akin-to-sending-teachers-and-pupils-into-a-building-guaranteed-to-catch-fire-39473486.html 

Government is making life-and-death call on school's reopening. It has to get it right

My article in yesterday's Independent

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/government-is-making-life-and-death-call-on-schools-reopening-it-has-to-get-it-right-39451430.html

Listening to Leo Varadkar  on RTÉ “guaranteeing” outbreaks of coronavirus in schools when they open, reminded me of the mayor in Jaws.

 

Mayor: “Get those kids back in the water”. Sheriff: “There’s a shark out there?” Mayor: “We’ll just have to live with it”. Sheriff: “People will die”. Mayor: “Yes, but tourism will survive!”

Meanwhile, acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr Glynn, said “children don't transmit very effectively to other children or adults”. As a parent,  I found that comment alarming. He should know that the ECDC report published last week states: “Children are more likely to have a mild or asymptomatic infection, meaning that the infection may go undetected or undiagnosed” and “When symptomatic, children shed virus in similar quantities to adults and can infect others in a similar way to adults.

Infact, there are numerous documented studies outlining the scale of risk associated with reopening schools. In Israel (like Ireland), where class sizes are big, the virus spread to students’ homes, other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives. Across the country, thousands of students and teachers were quarantined. Israel’s deputy Director of Public Health Services , Dr. Udi Kliner, said that “schools, not restaurants or gyms, turned out to be the country’s worst mega-infectors.”

A large new study from South Korea shows that children between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do. Cases in children in Germany have increased by 50% since they reopened schools and researchers in Berlin tested more than 3,700 coronavirus patients and found that children carried the same viral load as adults.

Our government seems unaware of these facts given the “roadmap” for school reopening does little to mitigate them. Aerosol transmission, for example, is not acknowledged, despite emerging evidence that the virus can travel up to 16 feet across an indoor space. This raises questions about proper ventilation, face masks and the efficacy of the roadmap’s “pods”. None of which are adequately addressed.

Another gaping omission from the roadmap is how to accommodate the many children who have underlying health conditions or whose family member(s) are high risk. What virtual/remote alternatives will be provided for those children who cannot attend school but remain entitled to an education?

What about the risks associated with multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) which is a covid related disease affecting children? Although the numbers are small, if contracted, it affects the heart and other major organs in the body and in a few cases it has proved fatal. Have teachers been made aware of the prevalence of this disease in children and how to spot it?

Community transmission is another key risk factor. The opening of schools safely was always contingent on levels being low.  NPHET warned Micheál Martin that, “We have to prevent the reimportation of the virus and unless we do that we are not going to be in a position to reopen our schools and get the economy up and running again.”

 Ignoring public health advisors, the government allowed, and continues to allow, tourists from the US, the most infected country in the world, unfettered access to our communities, thus reimporting the virus. Banned by other EU countries and Canada because the infection rate was out of control, Ireland said, “failte”. Even when New York banned flights from Texas, where in one day, 10,000 new cases were recorded, flights from Dallas landed here with no mandatory requirement to quarantine and no testing.

 With an R rate now of almost 2, how can it possibly be deemed safe to reopen schools?

 The government’s claim that “only 2%” of cases are related to foreign travel is disingenuous. As Dr Gabriel Scally warns, if we’re not quaranting and testing at source, the evidence trail is lost until it’s seeded in the community.

Instead of changing strategy, Micheál Martin wants us to learn to live with the virus. That’s like asking us to learn to live with a serial killer on the rampage.

 

However much money we throw at adapting our environments, as long as coronavirus is in our communities it will infiltrate our schools, nursing homes and workplaces. The only sustainable option is to adopt a zero-covid approach, which is to eradicate the virus from our shores, as New Zealand has done so successfully.

 

That requires mandatory quarantine so that all imported cases are detected on entry thus preventing community transmission and allowing schools, pubs, theatres and businesses to open at full capacity, safe in the knowledge that the silent assassin is not lurking in the shadows.

 

It’s crucial that schools re-open but it has to be done safely. After 3 months of being homeschooled by me, my child wrote a poem entitled “The Witch” which he insisted I send to his teacher. It was probably about me but I can’t be sure.

 

In the words of the WHO’s Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,  ”Treat the decisions about where you go, what you do, and who you meet as life-and-death decisions—because they are.”

 

Until the government can guarantee that reopening schools is safe, my child’s not getting back in the water.

"Who's running this country! Micheal Martin or Michael O-fecking-Leary?"

My article in yesterday's Irish Independent:

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/its-micheal-martin-not-michael-oleary-who-needs-to-pilot-our-covid-19-course-39399358.html

Full blog version below 👇

“Who is running this country! Micheál Martin or Michael O-Feck-ing Leary?” My 12 year smuggled a radio into his room and listened to Tony Holohan warn that foreign travel was the greatest threat to this country. This was immediately followed by a psychosis inducing Ryanair advert.

The answer of course is Michael O-Feck-ing-Leary. The announcement of the “green (means go) list” of “safe/quarantine exempt” countries that you definitely shouldn’t go to on holiday (wink wink), in contempt of NPHET’s advice, was undoubtedly an aviation lobby victory. Nonetheless, Ryanair is threatening litigation if the Irish government doesn’t open up further.

A week earlier, Philip Nolan, chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) warned that of the 23 cases confirmed that day 15 were directly or indirectly related to travel. The team recommend that “all measures are utilised to discourage non-essential travel from overseas to Ireland”, including mandatory quarantine.

Refusal to mandate quarantine is part of the government’s strategy of constructive ambiguity, otherwise known as, fiddling while Rome burns. It’s deployed by politicians pretending to do the right thing, whilst buying time for those who seek to exploit the manufactured mayhem.

The underhand watering down of the wording from “quarantine” to “restricting movements”, with no enforcement, exposes where our government’s loyalty lies.

Micheál Martin claims that he’s acting with caution compared to other European countries. Not so. Ireland and Britain are amongst the only EU countries that are allowing tourists from the US, the Covid capital of the world, into the country. Despite sharing a border, Canada has also banned US tourists.

It’s worth remembering that, when people are moving freely, one contagious person can infect, on average 3 people, who will then potentially infect another three. By the time you multiply that variable 10 times, exponentially the original person could have infected over 88,000 people.

For months, Leo Varadkar exploited constructive ambiguity around mandatory quarantine, citing “legal” issues. Last Wednesday, speaking on RTE radio, Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, said he sought clarity from the attorney general on the legality of quarantine. Turns out it’s legal, but “complex”. Presumably, a resurgence and lockdown 2 is the easy option? 

Minister Donnelly, erroneously claimed that quarantine has proven unworkable, referencing Australia as an example of failure. In fact, quarantine has been extremely effective throughout the country with the exception of Melbourne where security guards breached regulations. Donnelly evaded questions about New Zealand where, as of 23 July, there had been 83 days since the last community transmission case with all 22 active cases detected and contained in quarantine facilities.

Having been assured that mandatory quarantine is legal, presenting no deterrent to acting on the public health advice, Mr Donnelly said he then sought and gained the WHO’s blessing to effectively disregard his own public health experts and not bother with mandatory quarantine.

This was disconcerting, for two reasons, firstly, the WHO is not usually in the business of usurping country based public health advice and secondly, the claim appears to contradict the WHO’s strategic document which states: “Quarantine is included within the legal framework of the International Health Regulations (2005)”. Further: “Member States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation, in pursuit of their health policies, even if this involves the restriction of movement of individuals”.

Having cited advice from the WHO as grounds for ignoring Ireland’s public health experts, thereby potentially exposing Irish citizens to dangerous levels of community contagion, a crippling second lockdown and preventable deaths, Stephen Donnelly should make details of his alleged WHO advice available for scrutiny.

Listening to Minister Donnelly, I couldn’t help thinking of Dr Syed Waqqar Ali and his seven healthcare colleagues who died from coronavirus, sacrificing their lives to save ours. And, the scandalous revelation that Ireland has the highest coronavirus infection rate among healthcare workers in the world. I felt, acutely, the affront to these people to whom Stephen Donnelly has a direct duty of care. That he would seek to circumvent safeguards to protect them and citizens of this country, against the greatest Covid-19 threat (foreign travel) reduced me to tears of grief, frustration and anger.

Disclaimer: I lost a friend to coronavirus and I have loved ones risking their lives as medics. I am 100% biased in their favour and 0% buying this coalition of chaos’ blaggardery.

With public safety sacrificed at the altar of false gods, robust, fearless, public service broadcasting has never been more vital. Yet last Monday, Eoghan Corry, who advised against cancelling St Patrick's Day festivities, and who recently produced a “post-Covid” airline promo video on Ryanair, told RTE Radio listeners, “Spain is safe”. On the same day that British newspapers reported 200 Covid outbreaks throughout Spain, resulting in Britain imposing a 14 day quarantine on returning holidaymakers.

In the midst of a global pandemic, RTE is either a trusted news source grounded in forensic journalism, underpinned by evidence based health expertise, or a cheerleader for industry. It can’t be both.

Next up, Dr Jack Lambert contradicted the overwhelming medical consensus by defending the “green list”, disingenuously describing 88% of coronavirus cases as “Irish bred”. He should know, because colleagues such as Paddy Mallon, professor of Microbial Diseases, told the Dáil’s Covid-19 committee that, without mandatory quarantine, contact tracing becomes very difficult with community transmission “inevitable” as a result.

Dr Lambert’s reference to “Irish bred” cases of covid also fits with the strategy of constructive ambiguity that shifts the focus from overseas Covid carriers to blaming young people for house parties. The truth is that, had our government followed NPHET’s advice and that of 14 scientific and medical experts calling for the implementation of a zero Covid strategy to eliminate the virus, as New Zealand has done, pubs and local eateries would be open at 100% capacity now with social distancing and masks a thing of the past.

Our children and young people would be enjoying the summer they longed for. Instead they’ve been robbed of their rites of passage, cheated of hope and plagued by fear for the future.

Micheál Martin promised that his decisions on international travel would be underpinned by public health advice. He has reneged on his promise and people will die unnecessarily as a result.