Covid Inquiry: families say Stormont's not fit for purpose
They were speaking at the end of the hearings in Belfast
Last updated 16th May 2024
The UK Covid Inquiry, sitting in Belfast for the last three weeks, came to an end today (Thursday) - with families who lost loved ones during the pandemic having their say afterwards.
They included Brenda Doherty, who said evidence given to the public inquiry showed that the political system at Stormont was "not fit for purpose".
Speaking on behalf of Bereaved Families for Justice NI, Ms Doherty said: "Over the last three weeks we have heard evidence of delay, dysfunction and dereliction of duty by the political representatives who we relied on most during a time of crisis.
"The absence of our government for three years immediately prior to the pandemic left us totally unprepared for what was to come.
"When our elected representatives placed political ideology above the health of citizens by repeatedly, repeatedly collapsing the executive, the system is not fit for purpose."
Ms Doherty said political leaders in Northern Ireland had failed to learn lessons from the first wave of the pandemic.
She said: "We have heard overwhelming evidence that our political leaders sleepwalked....into the pandemic by failing to heed the most serious warnings in early 2020.
"Despite the loudest possible alarms being sounded, our representatives failed to act."
Ms Doherty said the political response came "much too late at a cost of thousands of people".
She added: "Rather than learning lessons from the first wave of the pandemic, the same mistakes were repeated time and time again.
"I was always told the only bad mistake is the one you don't learn from."
Earlier, the Inquiry chair, Baroness Heather Hallett said she would now take some time to consider all the evidence heard.
She said she hoped to make recommendations to ensure Northern Ireland is better prepared in the event of a future pandemic.
Baroness Hallett added that she hoped they covered the core decision-making and governance aspects of the latest module thoroughly and rigorously.
She said the inquiry will look in further detail at areas including care homes, test and trace and the impact on mental health in later modules.
"The report will take some time and I make no apologies for that. It's too important to rush and so I ask people to bear with us. I hope that we'll be able to publish it as soon as possible and I promise you the teams will be working extremely hard to make that possible," Baroness Hallett said.
"I hope that I'll be able to include in it recommendations that will make the system stronger and better able to withstand the challenge of a national civil emergency on the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I know it is important to all those who have suffered that I do make recommendations and that they are implemented as soon as possible because they hope to reduce the suffering of others in the future.
"I should like to thank the bereaved families and everyone else who suffered, and all those who have contributed to these hearings."
She added that she believes that it was worth "what is, I'm afraid, quite a large cost" in bringing the hearings to Belfast.
"As I've always said, this is a UK-wide inquiry. It is not a London Westminster specific inquiry," she said.
"I hope that my feelings are shared by the people of Northern Ireland, that it was worth bringing the inquiry here and I particularly hope that the bereaved feel that it was worth it. Some of them have been present throughout and I thank you for your constant support, but I know that many others have been following online and I thank them too."
The next main hearings in the inquiry are set to take part in the autumn.