By all means, hold the UK government’s feet to the fire. But collaboration with the Republic is no magic bullet.

We can hardly be surprised when the fault lines opened during this emergency.  As a society still in recovery from a different sort of crisis, let’s admit we all – all –  need help to avoid reverting to the old sectarian ding dong. Social media is a virus in itself and social distancing is its incubator. The first thing to hold onto is that we really are all in this together. The second is that things can only get worse in the immediate future, so we all need to keep our heads. It should be easier now than during the Troubles when so many of us were each other’s enemies.    On the current spats, I’d only comment that Michelle seems to be isolated on breaking ranks,  while on the issue of keeping open an EU office in Belfast, it seems that the two unionist parties are on their own. Small earthquakes in Chile.

On the big UK picture, what a relief to hear Matt Hancock admit in terms that Covid 19 caught us unprepared. As far back as 2016, the public health authorities in England concentrated on the possibility of a new flu which didn’t require Covid type measures. The Daily Telegraph has a plausible account. Germany following a tradition that goes back 150 years and was industrially better structured to cope.

The health experts I’ve heard – not just the guilty ones in Public Health England – keep saying that the  four “nations “ of the UK are in lockstep over what to do.  This is because the analysis, the resources in terms of massive funding and procurement are concentrated on the UK centre. I’m not sure they’ve noticed the politicians very much. The niceties of discretion for devolved government are small change.

But as Michelle O’Neill so rightly says, “we are where we are”. Fingers crossed but there are no big obstacles in thinking left to impede progress.  Now Hancock has set a tall order of 100,000 tests a day “by the end of the month.”  But this may too late to affect the   peak in deaths over the next couple of weeks. He wasn’t able to set a deadline for covering all medical workers.

But Northern Ireland has a comparator across the border. The Republic has set up a network of community testing facilities, with a target of 100,000 per week by the end of April. The situation in the south stands in sharp contrast to Northern Ireland where there was a goal of just 8,000 tests up to yesterday.

Even though the Republic has resumed community testing – long abandoned by the UK, –   no western country is approaching anything like an exit strategy for phasing out our various versions of lockdown. At the very least, that awaits a reliable antibodies test which still needs further research. So we’re all in for the long haul and our death tallies are likely to converge.

With our geography  history and politics  it’s little wonder that an all Ireland approach seems attractive,  particularly as political tensions over coronavirus in the Republic  are  so much less than in England – and this despite the fact that the lead party of government won the fewest seats of the three parties now in contention.

Andy Pollak, the former head of the centre for cross border studies in Armagh (and an old colleague) has made the case for following the advice of public health expert Gabriel Scally who has close knowledge of the health systems in these islands. Scally made a big impact with his descriptions of the errors in British approach to Covid.  His views rapidly became orthodox and are widely shared in GB.

Pollak says the handling of the foot and mouth crisis nineteen years ago is a model that should be followed. But this was small scale by comparison with Covid.

There is quite a difference between north-south “collaboration” and “harmonisation”. Uniform regulations for movement for vital cross border agricultural and other trade would be an obvious benefit. There may be others.  Measures like joint procurement of personal protection equipment for medical and care workers seems sensible and comparatively straightforward but has so far been a disappointment.. We await the details of the promised Memorandum of Understanding from the two leading public health officials which was the modest outcome of the last north-south tele conference.

But it must be said that so far, the south are not falling over themselves to share scarce resources funded by their taxpayers with the north. Why would they?

Scally was writing before Hancock announced his big push. And there are bigger questions that need answering  for moving to an all-Ireland system.

If we were to shift to harmonised procurement for testing and ventilators and embrace full community testing, how much would it cost and who would fund it? Full community testing means 1.8 million tests at least, plus a considerable margin for repeats. Call it 2 million? And the ratio between antigen and still to be validated  antibodies tests is undisclosed. Even if all the necessary chemicals were available and production was at full belt, full testing is months away- in other words, unrealistic. At some point over the next three  months,we’ll have to take the risk of easing restrictions on movement. That will surely be taken on an all- British Isles basis, given the open border and the common travel area.

As Whitehall would pay for most if it how would NI’s entitlement be assessed? Would it involve a subsidy from Dublin?

In the meantime would Dublin share scarce facilities with the North on an equal basis?

Are not the problems innate to the scale of the emergency and less as a result of a failure to integrate?

At this stage would not the delays in working it out would impose an extra burden all round? It’s true that there have fierce criticisms of Public Health England for over centralising everything from analysis to procurement.  Had some decentralisation been embraced even by the New Year it might have made a difference. Northern Ireland after all had its own measure of discretion already. But on the essentials, not. It all comes back to the UK assessment as long as four years ago, that eastern plagues were not a society changing threat and funding for them was not available. It has been catchup ever since  .

Robin Swann’s problems are but an echo of Matt Hancock’s.  He needs new facts urgently, on NI’s share of an upscaling of testing and better procurement. Independent labs for testing  and manufacturing for incubators  are now being harnessed in a massive effort by the UK government.

We now need to know need to know quickly what is Northern Ireland share of 100.000 tests a day   for the whole UK and how quickly they’ll come on stream. If assessed very roughly as a proportion of the UK population, this would mean about 17,500 tests a week of both kinds compared to the Republic’s target of 100,000 tests a week. This is still a wide gap and we can’t know if the targets can be reached.

Let’s move on such opportunities as there are with collaboration with the south.   But it’s surely far too late to start all over again. In analogy with other familiar arguments, Northern Ireland benefits from UK subvention and it’s far from clear if the Republic should be expected to shoulder any extra burden to accommodate the North.

No doubt this argument will be disputed. But let’s do it on the basis of facts not politics.

Photo by padrinan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Brian Walker

Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London