Success Against the Odds? Ireland’s Pandemic Response in Global Context

 

Tom Gerald Daly, Melbourne University

 

As an Irishman based in Australia, viewing the pandemic’s global impact from the secure distance of this continent state I have felt lucky to live in a country with an effective crisis response – and relieved to see the Irish authorities similarly flatten the curve. After all, key states have experienced stark failures: including the US, UK, Brazil, and Russia. Flattening the curve was not a foregone conclusion anywhere in March, and many countries are still nowhere near suppressing the virus. Deaths worldwide have reached the half-million mark.

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We already see ‘best responses’ lists appearing, with global front-runners including tiny states like Singapore, small states like Iceland, Denmark, Taiwan and the UAE, mid-size states such as South Korea, Greece, Finland, and Norway, and large states such as Argentina, Australia, and Canada.

Ireland, often overlooked in international commentary, generally belongs to the ‘honorable mention’ category, with 25,439 cases and 1,735 deaths by 28 June 2020 – a far higher death rate than countries with comparable populations such as Denmark, Norway or New Zealand, but far lower than the UK, for instance, even when adjusted by population.

Table: COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Worldwide

Country	Cases	Deaths	Deaths per million (population adjustment)
Low cases and/or deaths
Iceland	1,836	10	29.30
New Zealand	1,176	22	4.56
Singapore	43,246	26	4.44
Australia	7,641	104	4.08
Greece	3,366	191	18.32
Norway	8,815	249	45.93
South Korea	12,715	285	5.50
UAE	47,360	311	31.45
Finland	7,191	328	59.20
Denmark	12,675	604	104.28
Argentina	55,343	1,192	26.71
Ireland	25,439	1,735	351.17
High cases and/or deaths
USA	2,452,048	124,811	379.27
Brazil	1,274,974	55,961	268.49
Russia	634,437	9,073	61.46
India	528,859	16,095	11.66
UK	310,254	43,514	640.99

Sources: World Health Organization (WHO); Our World in Data. Date: 28 June 2020

Divergent Responses across the Democratic World

A different question is: who has addressed the crisis most effectively and democratically? This rules out undemocratic states like Singapore and the UAE (or China), where the state has a freer hand in implementing suppression measures. Democratic states, by contrast, have faced the twin challenges of addressing the virus effectively without wreaking too much damage on the democratic system.

Curating analysis of the pandemic’s impact on democracies worldwide since early April through the COVID-DEM project, clear commonalities are evident. An unprecedented number of states have simultaneously declared a state of emergency (or at least, like Ireland, emergency measures); postponed elections (with often little certainty as to when and how they will be held); and accorded sweeping powers to government. Citizens have had to submit to rights restrictions, ‘stay at home’ orders, expanded police powers, and in some states, surveillance apps, often without anything close to acceptable democratic scrutiny as parliaments (and the media) are hobbled by the lockdown.

Beyond these commonalities, we have seen four broad categories of government response:

1. Effective Rationalists: Some governments have effectively addressed the pandemic through rational fact-based policy, within the constraints of the law, and with clear limitations on emergency actions to preserve maximal democratic functioning. In New Zealand, parliamentary committees have continued and an Epidemic Response Committee was established to scrutinise government action. South Korea flattened the curve primarily through contact tracing and successfully held national elections on 15 April – the first country to do so. These states have benefited from their starting position of high-quality democratic governance, high state capacity, and the economic ability to assist individuals negatively affected by emergency measures.

2. Constrained Rationalists: Other governments have also taken a broadly rational and law-abiding approach but face serious limitations due to lower state capacity. South Africa, for instance, has taken measures such as appointing a COVID-19 Designated Judge to oversee the use of phone data for contact tracing. However, lockdown enforcement by police has been excessive and the state is said to be facing a ‘state of disaster’ due to emergency measures preventing access to food, water, and even basic hygiene. The state is also less equipped to address the economic fall-out of the lockdown, with uncertain implications for its fragile young democracy.

3. Autocratic Opportunists: Some governments, while recognising the reality of the threat, have pounced on the crisis to further expand, and dismantle any remaining checks on, their power. Hungary is the poster child, with the prime minister empowered to rule by decree, unconstitutional extension of the emergency, and a controversial new law criminalizing “publication of false or distorted facts”. States like India suffer from a toxic admixture of the capacity constraints and authoritarian acceleration in categories (ii) and (iii).

4. Fantasists: Key governments’ responses have been hobbled by partial or full denial of the facts presented by recognised experts, and engagement in conspiracy theories (e.g. that the pandemic is a Chinese bio-weapon).  ‘Pandemic denial’ has turned the USA into a global outbreak hotspot with over 120,000 deaths, placed citizens in the unenviable position of risking their health and lives to exercise their democratic rights in primary elections, encouraged inaction at federal and state levels, and endlessly undermined any action taken. Similarly, Brazil’s death rate has climbed above 50,000 largely due to President Bolsonaro, who continues to simply refuse to act and for whom, it has been said, “politics comes before truth”.

 

How Does Ireland Compare?

Viewed against this global landscape, Ireland certainly fits within the ‘effective rationalists’ camp. Measures taken to suppress the virus have generally abided by rule-of-law principles, accorded with the Constitution, and been subject to regular review. Public health experts have been centre-stage. Government communication has been clear, and at times, compelling – there has been no comparison between Leo Varadkar’s St Patrick’s Day speech, for instance – lauded as a “model of lucidity” by one leading Australian commentator – and the minimal, technical communication from Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison.

Certainly, serious deficiencies have included the blurrier limits occasioned by the constitutional bar to declaring a formal state of emergency, the vagueness of criminal offences in the original lockdown restrictions, and problematic time-lags between the entry into effect of statutory instruments and their publication – only recently addressed through a new website. Most importantly, as many have offered, the shuttering of the Oireachtas due to contested legal advice has left Ireland without parliamentary scrutiny while parliaments in other states – including the UK, Canada, and the USA – have continued sitting through face-to-face, online, or ‘hybrid’ means. 

Yet, it is important to emphasise that, even in the world’s top performers, concerns have arisen. In New Zealand, for instance, analysts have debated the legality of the government’s response, with some arguing that lockdown orders issued under the Health Act 1956 went beyond what the Act permits. Taiwan’s legislative framework has been criticized as giving a ‘blank check’ to the executive. In South Korea, cases have started to rise again, raising questions about the decision to avoid a strict lockdown.

In Australia, although successful institutional innovation such as the intergovernmental National Cabinet has coordinated executives across the federation and avoided the chaotic intergovernmental tussles seen in the USA, parliaments nation-wide have been shuttered simply due to a sidelining of parliaments’ importance as executives have dominated the crisis response and advice on successful measures elsewhere has been ignored (that said, inspired by New Zealand, a COVID-19 committee has been established in the federal senate to oversee the governmental response).

 

Success against the Odds?

It is also important to highlight that Ireland has also been dealing with – and has largely overcome – multiple political challenges that the likes of Australia, Denmark, or New Zealand have not had to face: as Joelle Grogan has put it, “a caretaker government relying on continued cross-party support to implement the widest delegation of sweeping powers to introduce the most restrictive measures on individual liberty in the history of the state, all with limited parliamentary scrutiny and judicial oversight.” While she rightly observes that this has left the official response on shaky ground, the fact that the political system as a whole managed to work together in this fragmented and fraught climate without hampering the pandemic response is also admirable. However, now that a new government is in place and a new phase of the response is ongoing, the State should be held to an even higher standard as its response develops. Crucially, unlike the Australian government, every effort should be made to avoid a snap back to a ‘business as usual’ that has only fed political fragmentation, inequality, and vulnerability.

Tom Gerald Daly is Deputy Director and Associate Professor at Melbourne School of Government, and Director of the online platform Democratic Decay & Renewal (DEM-DEC). DEM-DEC’s project COVID-DEM, launched on 3 April 2020, curates and publishes analysis of how the pandemic is affecting democracy worldwide.

Suggested citation: Tom Gerald Daly, ‘Success Against the Odds? Ireland’s Pandemic Response in Global Context’ COVID-19 Law and Human Rights Observatory Blog (1 July 2020)  http://tcdlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/success-against-odds-irelands-pandemic.html

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