Lockdown one year on: Looking back we could’ve done things differently says O’Neill

Michelle O’Neill said that balancing the need to protect lives and livelihoods had been a “nightmare”.

She did not specifically mention the Bobby Storey funeral, which became one of the dominant stories of the whole year, after thousands of people attended the IRA man’s send-off during summer of last year.

Michelle O’Neill has previously said “I will never apologise for attending the funeral of my friend”.

“I think there’ll be plenty of time for reflection, I think today is about individuals, their loss, their experience and we’re focused on that,” she said, speaking today.

“We’re still fighting the pandemic, we’re still in the middle of it, we’re still having to chart our way through it and it’s very challenging, very difficult to always trying to get that balance.

“I’m quite sure whenever we reflect there’ll be lots of things we all could have done differently.

“For now, my focus is firmly on the future, trying to get us out of this pandemic, this space that we’re in right now.

“But, I mean, there is learning. I’ve learned every day in this pandemic, you know constantly trying to balance lives and livelihoods the whole way through this has been been a nightmare at times to be honest.

“It’s been a time where we’ve demonstrated that as political leaders when we work together we actually can support our people and it’s something that’s hugely, for me, a very strong point over the past year.

“Albeit at times there was difficulties and different approaches, but I think, collectively, we’ve worked together to try to do the right thing.

“That’s all we were trying to do every time we had big decisions to make. It was about trying to do the right thing for people and to get them through what was something that none of us knew how to deal with, none of us had predicted and certainly whenever we restored the executive in January of last year, none of us would have predicted that we would face a global pandemic and that we would be still sitting in the middle of it one year later.”

Arlene Foster acknowledged there were things the Executive could have done differently as it responded to the pandemic.

“Obviously there is things that we would have done differently if we had known what was coming in the future but I think there will be a time to look back and reflect on all of the decisions that have been taken, how we took them, the pace in which we had to take them,” she said.

“I think what was very clear to me, from executive colleagues, and of course we have our differences at time, but we all wanted, all of us, to do what was right for all of our community.

“For some of us having to close down the economy was hugely difficult. We’ve spent most of our political career building up the economy, building up our tourism sector and hospitality sector, and to have it closed for the best part of a year has been hugely damaging for people’s livelihoods and indeed for their well being.

“We have had to take decisions for the greater good, which have been hugely, hugely difficult. I’m on record of saying that this has been the toughest year of my political life.”

Exactly one year ago, on March 23, 2020, Boris Johnson delivered his fateful speech to the nation, locking down the entire country in an unprescedented move.

Looking back on Covid-19’s arrival:

February 2020: It is a matter of when, not if, coronavirus appears in NI: officials

March 2020: Coronavirus: QUB virus expert says total shutdown of NI society needed immediately

March 2020: Half the Northern Irish population getting Covid-19 ‘is not a wild guess’ says viral expert doctor

December 2020: Counting cost of Covid curbs: 30,000 NI job losses by end of 2020 predicts top economist

January 2021: Serious winter flu cases virtually wiped out in Northern Ireland

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