Politics

Seanín Graham: Dominic Cummings’ explosive claims will have massive repercussions for Northern Ireland

Dominic Cummings, former Chief Adviser to British prime minister Boris Johnson, giving evidence to a joint inquiry of the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees on the subject of Coronavirus: lessons learnt. Picture by PA Wire 
Dominic Cummings, former Chief Adviser to British prime minister Boris Johnson, giving evidence to a joint inquiry of the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees on the subject of Coronavirus: lessons learnt. Picture by PA Wir Dominic Cummings, former Chief Adviser to British prime minister Boris Johnson, giving evidence to a joint inquiry of the Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees on the subject of Coronavirus: lessons learnt. Picture by PA Wire 

DOMINIC Cummings’ explosive claims about disastrous decision making costing thousands of lives during the pandemic have massive repercussions for Northern Ireland – given Stormont rigidly followed Whitehall policies during the first wave.

From the get-go last March, senior officials from the Department of Health in the north repeatedly said they would be “guided by the science”, particularly on crucial areas such as Covid-19 testing.

Pledges of openness and transparency were also made but didn’t hold water as it became nigh on impossible to get any level of detailed data or access (for this newspaper) to those at the top.

Information on care home deaths and Covid admissions simply didn’t exist until late April when it was apparent the disease was rampant in this sector and killing the most vulnerable.

And it is the area of care homes and Stormont’s decision to follow the London approach that will be perhaps the most troubling in any public inquiry for northern  politicians and civil servants.

The decision to admit positive hospital patients to care homes last spring - albeit with them ‘isolated’ - was a catastrophic one.

By May, care home residents accounted for more than 50 per cent of the north’s Covid death toll.

In one week alone, a staggering 62 per cent of deaths took place in the care home sector.

Mr Cummings yesterday slated UK health secretary Matt Hancock’s claim that care homes were protected with a ‘Covid shield’ as “complete nonsense” - and said that people in England were sent to homes without being tested for the virus.

Last summer, The Irish News revealed a leaked letter penned by the most senior servant at the north’s Department of Health in April 2020 in which he endorsed the admission of Covid positive hospital patients to care homes - as long as they could be isolated, a move which proved hugely difficult especially during a period of chronic PPE shortages.

The correspondence, issued by Richard Pengelly to the north’s health trust chiefs, also stressed that a new testing regime designed to prevent the spread of the disease by swabbing patients 48 hours before they leave hospital and go into homes “must not hold up a timely discharge” (which was written in bold).

Despite being a devolved administration, Northern Ireland’s Covid policies during the first surge repeatedly mirrored London’s and led to political clashes at Stormont - particularly on the decision to withdraw community testing during those early months.

The failings of the controversial policy - it was subsequently reversed - were best illustrated by a Northern Ireland paramedic who tested positive last April after attending 50 callouts in the previous fortnight - yet neither his colleagues nor patients were tested or contact traced “as per UK guidelines”.

Health minister Robin Swann robustly defended the policies at the time amid a storm of criticism that more 'surge planning' had gone into thospital settings than community.

In the first of only two interviews with The Irish News over the course of the pandemic, Mr Swann last May flatly rejected any claims they had failed those in nursing homes last May and insisted that work had gone on "behind the scenes".

Meanwhile, Mr Cummings held up his hands yesterday in relation to the role he played as Boris Johnson’s closest aide and apologised for falling “disastrously short” of standards expected by the public in the unprecedented crisis.

While the extraordinary success of the north’s vaccination programme is now uppermost in the public consciousness as people desperately want to exit lockdown and resume some semblance of normal life, the human cost of Stormont’s leaders being led by Whitehall during the initial phase is immense.

With more than 1,000 families of care home residents bereaved in Northern Ireland alone due to coronavirus, yesterday’s evidence session will only have further compounded their grief - and anger - at hearing their loved one’s passing could have been potentially avoided.

As public health expert Professor Gabriel Scally put it: “I think it underlines the folly of Northern Ireland having followed - unquestioningly - the Whitehall approach and in some ways being part of that secretive and wrong Whitehall approach through their participation in meetings and SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies).

"...People were lied to...Some of these decisions (around care homes) had lethal consequences - they were wrong. They were based on either a lack of knowledge or a lack of willingness to know what the right thing to do was."