TAOISEACH MICHEÁL MARTIN said he “hopes” the Covid-19 inquiry can be “expedited” so that Ireland can be “better prepared into the future”.

Officially termed the Covid-19 Evaluation Panel, the inquiry will provide an account of the strategy and approach to planning for and handling of the pandemic from 1 January 2020 to 29 February 2022.

But unlike a statutory inquiry, the evaluation’s chair, Professor Anne Scott, will not have the power to compel documents or witnesses.

The inquiry will identify lessons learned with regard to health and social care system performance, as well as the wider Government response to managing and mitigating risks.

It will also recommend guiding principles and processes for future decision-making in the context of a rapidly moving threat of the scale and duration of Covid-19.

The inquiry officially began its work at the start of February and will submit its final report to the Taoiseach within 12-18 months.

Last week, the Covid-19 Evaluation released an update to say it has been “focused on preparatory work and scaling up its team”.

This is being done as a “precursor to wide-ranging public consultation and engagement, which will take place over the coming weeks and months”.

Speaking to reporters in Washington last week at he finished up his St Patrick’s Day activities in the US, Martin noted that the inquiry is underway.

“I hope it can be expedited with a view to re-evaluating what do we take from it to enable us to be better prepared into the future,” he added.

Martin also remarked that while he can remember going over pandemic plans over the past 20 years, “when the pandemic happens, not everything goes in accordance with the plans that might have been written up in respect of it”.

“There are structural issues we need to look at in terms of how one would respond, in terms of the collective approach of government and so forth.

“There are certainly things we can pick up on.”

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announcing the first of the Covid lockdowns from Washington.

Martin said that the pandemic was a “very traumatic period for a lot of people”.

“We should never forget that many, many people lost their lives, and many families were bereaved and found it very hard to mourn the loss of their loved ones.”

Martin added that he felt the “Health Service responded well overall”, as did the entire country.

“The big lesson for me is that vaccination was the key,” said Martin, “and we should never lose sight of that.”

He pointed to vaccinated rates as the reason “societies come back as quickly as they did”.

“The importance there is how do we ensure continued international collaboration on the vaccine front and collaboration with industry,” said Martin.

“I think the European Union did a stellar job in respect of combining industry with research.

“This enabled us to get the vaccines both brought to market and approved, and then to get them manufactured at a pace and volume that enables societies to come back.”

Measles vigilance 

Meanwhile, Martin spent some time in Austin, Texas during his visit to the US.

Texas is currently dealing with a measles outbreak, which caused the death of an unvaccinated child in the state earlier this month.

An unvaccinated adult has also died from measles-related causes in neighbouring New Mexico – prior to this month, the last death from the disease in the US occurred in 2015.

Martin was asked if he was worried about anti-vaccination sentiments in Ireland and acknowledged that there was a “fear” during the Covid pandemic that “there would be a certain resistance to vaccines”.

However, he said that as the pandemic developed, “there was no issue really in Ireland in terms of take-up”.

He described the take-up levels as “extraordinary” and remarked that counterparts in the EU were impressed with the vaccination rates in Ireland.

However, he expressed concerns about measles and noted that when he was Health Minister in 2000, there was a measles outbreak in Dublin which led to the deaths of three children.

He noted that there “was a lot of negativity around the vaccine at the time” in Ireland during the outbreak in the year 2000.

“So we have to be very vigilant,” cautioned Martin.

He added that “we need to be open about vaccines” and that “transparency and openness in public health discussions around vaccines is very important”.

“But I’m in no doubt that it’s a serious issue,” said Martin.

He said that “vaccines changed the course of medical history” and noted that infectious diseases such as diphtheria, which killed thousands of children in the 1920s, has now virtually “vanished”.

“We must not lose sight of that, vaccines work at a societal level, and vaccines do give immunity, and we will be very vigilant on that front,” said Martin.

He warned of “fads and phases where people start jumping on to a particular thought-process in respect to specific vaccines”.

However, Martin said he “takes heart from what happened in the pandemic” in terms of vaccination rates.