yes, she absolutely did. over the last three weeks, that is how long the uk covert inquiry has been sitting here in belfast. we have heard a lot of talk about political dysfunction and how much that affected the decision made in northern ireland dealing with a pandemic. just remind you why that was the case, the executive, here in northern ireland, the devolved government, it hadn t been sitting for three years in the build up to the pandemic. it had collapsed and was only up and going again for a matter of weeks. whenever the covert case was detected. politicians and political parties were not in a good place, to say the least. there has been a lot of questioning during the inquiry about leadership, but he was making the decisions on who was plotting northern irelandpath. as we have heard from arlene foster, she has said that as first minister that she took responsibility for how the executive handled things. but, she did say that she thought northern ireland should have loc
for bobby storey, the former sinn fein chairman who was linked to several major incidents when he was a member of the ira. he died injune 2020 and critics have suggested social distancing was not maintained at the funeral. michelle o neill is now giving evidence. let s have a listen in. to evidence. let s have a listen in. if? those first evidence. let s have a listen in. to those first months of the pandemic, in order to understand what government in northern ireland was doing to respond, and i want to start with what you say about this in your witness statement, please, and if we could go to page nine, paragraph 29. paragraph 29, just to orientate us in time. this was the 25th of february. i will come back to that strategic review. butjust looking at paragraph 30 and what you say there, at this time, the time period you are talking about, the department of health remained the lead department in responding to the predicted global pandemic. staff had stood up ccg and i will c