At Monday’s meeting in County Hall, Cork elected representatives shot down a motion seeking an independent inquiry into the government’s reaction to Covid 19 and the elevated rate of excess deaths occurring since.
Local paper the Evening Echo reported on the ‘robust exchanges’ that followed.
(Full text below)
The article carried comments from East Cork based former Fianna Fail Councillor Mary Linehan Foley:
“This isn’t political and anyone who makes a political football out of covid or anything else is wrong in my opinion — shame on them.”
In the video above myself and Councillor Peter O’Donoghue (Kilworth, North Cork) discuss the motion, his reasons for tabling it and his fellow councillors’ reaction to it.
For clarity, here’s the full text of the motion:
“That considering it is 5 years since the introduction of the Covid Lockdowns, Cork County Council would write to the Taoiseach and request that a fully transparent, Independent public inquiry into the previous government’s reaction to the Covid 19 virus be held within the coming 3 months and that this inquiry would also investigate the causes of the major increase in excess deaths in the last 3 years and if these deaths are linked to the covid restrictions.”
The Evening Echo (a paper I worked for at the start of my career!) includes some noteworthy commentary from Cllr Mary Linehan Foley. She left the Fianna Fail party in 2014, after she was overlooked for nomination to run for the Dail. Cllr Linehan Foley said that those attempting to raise the issue of covid and excess deaths should be ashamed. But why?
Should Allison McCarthy be ashamed? Her mother Alice Donovan phoned Gardai from the Mercy hospital in Cork asking why she had been abandoned. Allison is part of the advocacy group Care Champions, which represents the bereaved in their search for a transparent inquiry into what happened.
Should Allison McCarthy be ashamed?
Cllr Linehan Foley has actively denied Allison McCarthy the opportunity for an independent inquiry.
The same public representative raises an interesting point. Was covid political?
Didn’t all parties abandon the people they represent by rolling in behind a response that continues to actively harm the people of Ireland to this day?
If the people of Cork have no recourse to democracy through their elected representatives, what is the purpose of the Council?
Ms Linehan Foley said:
“I have friends, as everyone in this chamber had, who died from covid. I have friends that would have given anything if the vaccine was out before they died,” she said, stressing that neither she nor anybody else in the chamber was qualified medically. “We trusted our government —and I’m an Independent so it’s not my government — and it was elected democratically by the people.
The statement is incorrect, as Cllr Peter O’Donoghue stated at the outset of his motion that Dr Pat Morrissey was present in the chamber. Dr Morrissey is a well respected medically qualified doctor and practicing GP.
As a reporter, given her comments of mistruth to the Chamber, I must ask if Cllr Linehan Foley’s ‘friends who died from covid’, did in fact die ‘from covid’? We must deal in facts and truth. Below are two examples of elderly women whose deaths were ‘due to covid’ when in actual fact, there were unaware they had covid until they went to hospital having sustained injuries in a fall.
Cllr Linehan Foley said:
“We have to put our trust in them (the government) otherwise we’re finished.”
A bizarre statement from a politician who considers herself ‘independent.’
Once again and to finish, Cllr Peter O’Donoghue asked for a fully transparent public inquiry into the government’s covid response and the current rate of excess deaths.
A separate inquiry to the government’s ‘Covid 19 Evaluation.’
Interesting to note that the government’s Evaluation framework explicitly excludes any examination of pharmaceutical interventions.
Should we be ashamed to ask why pharmaceutical interventions introduced in response cannot be evaluated?
Thanks to those supporting this work. Option to ‘buy a coffee’ here
Patrick E Walsh writes extensively on the topic of Irish excess deaths.
More information on www.irelandexcessdeaths.com
Read Monday’s article on the meeting in Cork Council Chamber:
In his speech outlining the need for an inquiry into excess deaths, Cllr O’Donoghue said the following:
“We know that cancer rates have increased dramatically. A recent report by the EU commission found that Ireland now has the second highest rate of new cancer diagnosis in the EU with the number of cancer cases projected to grow by 47 percent in Ireland from 2022 to 2040. And most worrying of all is that we know that deaths in the country have increased dramatically.
“In fact we know from compiled data from the General Register Office and RIP.ie that excess deaths are up over 22,000 between January 2021 and February 2025. This in the years after the “pandemic” when the death rate should naturally be in decline. This is absolutely staggering data.”
The council dealt with the motion by proposing an amendment to it, to allow for the government’s inquiry into the covid response to be completed first.
The amendment was passed by 41 in favour, three against.
Here’s the full text of Concubhar Ó Liatháin’s article published in the Evening Echo :
Covid should not be politicised and those who attempted to make a political football of it should be ashamed of themselves, an Independent member of Cork County Council has said.
East Cork councillor Mary Linehan Foley made the comments in response to a motion brought by Fermoy-based Independent councillor Peter O’Donoghue calling for a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic and demanding that it investigate whether excess deaths over the past three years were linked to covid restrictions.
Ireland has set up a covid-19 evaluation, rather than a statutory inquiry to investigate the response to the pandemic.
As he proposed the motion, which was seconded by Independent councillor William O’Leary, Mr O’Donoghue asked if lives had been saved by the imposition of restrictions, which were announced in a speech by then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in March 2020.
“The government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party, which was fully supported by all so-called opposition parties, implemented the longest lockdown in Europe in 2020, causing a severe recession and an unprecedented rise in unemployment,” he said.
“It shut down our schools, shut down our churches, shut down our places of work, shut down our pubs, our restaurants, any place one could socialise, shut down our building sites, stopped people from seeing their loved ones. [It] took thousands of our elderly out of our hospitals where those with serious illnesses had proper care and put them into nursing homes where the necessary level of care was not available.”
Ms Linehan Foley said that the motion was making political what she described as a “very sad and sensitive issue”.
“I have friends, as everyone in this chamber had, who died from covid. I have friends that would have given anything if the vaccine was out before they died,” she said, stressing that neither she nor anybody else in the chamber was qualified medically. “We trusted our government —and I’m an Independent so it’s not my government — and it was elected democratically by the people.
“We have to put our trust in them or otherwise we’re finished.
“There is an inquiry ongoing and we’ve to wait on the results of that.
Her remarks were broadly supported across the chamber and Fianna Fáil councillor Patrick Mulcahy suggested an amendment proposing that any discussion of covid should be postponed until after the completion of the ongoing inquiry or evaluation initiated last October.
Mr Mulcahy’s amendment was passed by an overwhelming margin of 41 votes to three and this meant that Mr O’Donoghue’s motion fell and wasn’t voted upon.
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