The UK government should have “stepped in” to fill gaps in emergency planning caused by the breakdown in the Northern Ireland executive between January 2017 and 2020, former first minister Arlene Foster has told Britain’s Covid inquiry.
The collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing agreement in 2017 meant it had no government for three years.
But bereaved families said the inquiry had shown how insufficient work to prepare for a pandemic was done even while the government was sitting – and a top civil servant denied that the lack of ministers hampered his department’s activities on emergency planning.
