Five political lessons to be taken from year that was

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Summing up the political year that was is easy and difficult – because the long shadow of Covid casts a darkness over everything. But let’s try to sum it up in five succincy points.

Lesson number one – Never Assume Anything

Or put another way, to quote the famous tag-line from the film Jaws: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water”.

There was a sense coming into this winter that we were finally coming to the end of the pandemic experience. We had an enviable record across Europe with 93 per cent of the eligible population aged twelve and over vaccinated.

But then, cases went on the rampage among the unvaccinated. Most of those were kids under twelve. At this stage there is no school in the country that has not escaped an outbreak.

Then we began to see that some things were less certain that we had assumed. For one the vaccines – even gold-star Pfizer Biontech – were not as bullet-proof as we all thought.

As vaccinated parents got Covid from their kids we learned about the “waning effect” and breakthrough infections. Protection from the vaccines only lasted so long. The good news was that waning as the protection was, it was still strong enough to prevent people from getting serious illness.

Still the numbers in hospitals went up. But not alarmingly like they did last year. Except for the unvaccinated and those with underlying conditions. So that direct nexus between cases and hospitalisation had been broken.

While the case number were high, we all felt a little blasé and felt like a ‘meaningful Christmas’ was on the way.

And then Omicron came

This shock is not like the one that brought in the Troika a decade ago

There was a moment during this pandemic when the amount of people relying on the Pandemic Unemployed Payment went over 600,000.

In the first week of May last year, it reached 605,671. The State has paid out close to a mind-boggling €20 billion in PUP, the Employee Wage Subsidy Scheme and other support schemes since coronavirus forced the first lockdown in April last year.

Still, the economy has not been floored like it was the last time. Then a massive bubble burst and the State quickly went from being full of fast money to being stone-broke. This time around, the fundamentals were far stronger. Borrowing was easier and the State was essentially in a position to spend its way out of the problem.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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