For bobby storey, the former sinn fein chairman who was linked to several major incidents when he was a member of the ira. He died injune 2020 and critics have suggested social distancing was not maintained at the funeral. Michelle oneill is now giving evidence. Lets have a listen in. To evidence. Lets have a listen in. If . Those first evidence. Lets have a listen in. To those first months of the pandemic, in order to understand what government in Northern Ireland was doing to respond, and i want to start with what you say about this in your witness statement, please, and if we could go to page nine, paragraph 29. Paragraph 29, just to orientate us in time. This was the 25th of february. I will come back to that strategic review. Butjust looking at paragraph 30 and what you say there, at this time, the time period you are talking about, the Department Of Health remained the lead department in responding to the predicted global pandemic. Staff had stood up ccg and i will come back to t
because they were never meant for public consumption in the aftermath, we were never meant to see them. but on a deeper level, whether there was a paper trail about some of these decisions, rishi sunak said basically that he didn t think there was a particular issue with that, it wasn t like he was trying to hide anything, but some of these conversations did take place in private. all this came up from an article that was written in the spectator magazine in the summer of last year, which was an interview that was done with rishi sunak at the time when he was a leadership contender. where he talked generally about how decisions were being made during the time. and i think it was quite an interesting insight into exactly that. let s hear a little bit from it now. exactly that. let s hear a little bit from it now. the author of the article says bit from it now. the author of the article says that bit from it now. the author of the article says that you bit from it now. t
concerned about it. you have in fact already given evidence concerned about it. you have in fact already given evidence in concerned about it. you have in fact already given evidence in relation i to why you suggested at an earlier stage there were comparisons between swine flu and you have described the importance to you of not talking the economy down. the first line, he doesn t think anything can be done, may ijust ask doesn t think anything can be done, may i just ask you, this doesn t think anything can be done, may ijust ask you, this date the 3rd of march comes after your meeting with the civil contingency secretariat, after the cobra of which there is some early debate about measures and what can be done, and if you did say on the 3rd of march two mr cummings i don t think anything can be done, that casts a very significant light upon what you were being told around that time. i cannot say exactly what i said to my adviser, cannot say exactly what i said to my a
of countermeasures. why did you not say those things? say those things? that is not howl would characterise say those things? that is not howl would characterise the say those things? that is not howl would characterise the situation. i would characterise the situation. the first thing is that i am not confident that by this cabinet meeting, i will have known that sage had concluded that containment was lost. and in fact, i don t think that i was told that for a number of days after. as i said, i m not exactly sure when i was told that. but this meeting was the morning after the minutes of sage coming to that conclusion. secondly, at this point in the department and nphet and the health service, we were working extremely hard to prepare for the pandemic. i had commissioned the action plan and work was under way on that and phe. we were attempting and pushing phe to build the testing system and all of the other things we were directly responsible for. as i say, we were
those two cases were on the 30th and sist those two cases were on the 30th and 31st of january and there would almost certainly be more. the central point according to these minutes is that government had a plan to deal with illness. yes. you didn t in fact, plan to deal with illness. 133 you didn t in fact, within the department of health and social care, commission until the 10th of february the plan, the battle plan as you describe in your statement, or the action plan as it was published on the 3rd of march. and therefore, what plan was it that you were referring to cabinet colleagues too, to deal with the illness? firstly, we had the pandemic flu strategy set out in 2011, but by this point we had a whole series of different plans for expanding different plans for expanding different areas. so we had a plan for the expansion of testing within the hd. that plan didn t go fast enough and i had to take serious action to change that in the middle of march. we had a plan for