Transparency should not be a casualty of the Covid-19 health crisis

In matters of health policy, questions should be answered with honesty and clarity

Paul Reid, the HSE’s chief executive, claimed early on that the HSE had secured an adequate stock of PPE. It hadn’t. At least not back then

It’s a health crisis, not a war – truth doesn’t have to be the first casualty.

The cliché that “the first casualty of war is the truth” has been variously attributed to the oft-quoted Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu, the ancient Greek Aeschylus and to Hiram Johnson, the 20th century isolationist American senator.

Dissimulation, propaganda and active disinformation are all valid tactics in wartime. They can be used to deceive and defeat an enemy and, more controversially, ...