It is often said that hindsight is 20:20 vision. But sometimes I wonder whether that is true. Retrospective consideration of major public issues is frequently distorted by a desire on the part of those conducting inquiries and assessments to safeguard themselves politically or to justify what they did or did not do.
To take a simple example, we have just experienced a very major weather event that left more than 750,000 ESB consumers, both domestic and business, without power for extended periods. Some time ago I wrote here about the experience of people in Roscommon whose power supplies are regularly interrupted and frequently unreliable. Storm Éowyn left many people without electricity for more than a week – and some are still without power.
The anger expressed by some victims of power cuts towards politicians is entirely understandable. While environmentalists may claim that Storm Éowyn is the predictable result of climate change, two things remain to be considered. Firstly, if the storm was truly predictable, who was preparing for it and in what way? Second, if massive power outages are likely to become more frequent, how do we factor that into policymaking across government?
For instance, new homes and grant-aided home insulation schemes are now required to be all electric. Fireplaces and solid fuel stoves are joining gas and oil-fired central heating on political death row.
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Even before Storm Éowyn, the previous snowstorm in the south of the country led to lengthy power outages for 120,000 consumers. Is it possible to pursue policies based solely on electricity as an energy source without exposing Ireland to very major risks in terms of energy supply? Was it wise to terminate all gas exploration in Irish waters and to import all our gas needs via a highly vulnerable gas interconnector to Scotland? The Academy of Irish Engineers warned about this vulnerability three years ago. But did anybody listen? Are undersea pipelines any more immune from attack than underwater optic cables in the new era of Russian aggression?
Do we have sufficient generating capacity on hand to power an increasingly electrified economy and growing population? Do we have to face up to the hard questions concerning nuclear power? Is a strategy based wholly on wind and solar power sustainable or safe?
It is all very well for climate change activists to point to Storm Éowyn and sagely say, “I told you so”. But are the same people asking us to adopt policies that simply don’t measure up to their own predicted risks? Why did we spend the lifetime of the last government preventing the building of LNG capacity if it is generally accepted that gas-generated electricity and home heating will be needed for at least another 20 years on anyone’s projections?
My point is this: Ireland needs to learn lessons from its own experiences. And politics often prevents a clear-minded approach to that learning process.
Another example is the State’s response to the Covid pandemic. I greatly fear that any Irish retrospective examination of the merits and demerits of the then government’s reaction will be clouded by an establishment desire to justify everything that was done.
Was the government of the day totally beholden to the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet)? Was Nphet as competent or omniscient as we were all led to believe? Was it necessary to close down the economy as radically as was done? Could we have made different choices? Was economic damage completely discounted compared with the inadequate capacity of our hospital system to cope with Covid cases? How many extra intensive care beds have even now been put in place to deal with any similar epidemic?
While there is still controversy concerning the approach taken by Sweden to the Covid pandemic, one advantage of different countries pursuing different responses is that we should be able to learn with the benefit of hindsight which countermeasures were effective, which countermeasures were inadequate or misguided and which were wholly excessive. People still ask how it made any sense to confine people within county boundaries as large as Co Cork while banning journeys from Shankill to Bray.
The economic damage done by the shutdown was huge and is still reflected in warehoused tax arrangements. Social and psychological damage has never really been assessed or quantified in terms of human wellbeing, educational outcomes and personal isolation.
It seems to me that any worthwhile processes of retrospective inquiry into issues such as Storm Éowyn or Covid should be based on a healthy and sometimes adversarial examination of the issues and options that were taken. If that is not done, there is a danger that we will miss the more obvious lessons to be drawn from those events. We cannot afford to have a process of self-justification end up in a policy whitewash. We need competing ideas and competing perspectives to be openly expressed in the forum of public opinion rather than submerged in a phoney, flaccid retrospective consensus.
