Whatever the nomenclature, our politicians, with their heel dragging, have painted themselves into a corner with the requirement to establish this process on the eve, or even during, a general election.

This point was acknowledged two months ago when the former HSE chief Paul Reid said that, although the inquiry is due, "if you are a minister in Government now, it's probably not what you'd want coming up to an election ahead".

He added that Covid-19 was “a global pandemic we weren't prepared for; we now need to look back on what we need to keep in place and invest in, what things we would do differently?” 

With that in mind, it is instructive to see the new watchlist from the World Health Organization. 

In its first revision since 2017, it has added the Black Death plague, bird flu, and mpox, which used to be known as monkeypox, to the schedule of pathogens which could trigger the next global health crisis. 

They join notorious diseases such as Zika and yellow fever. 

Several bacteria including cholera and salmonella have been incorporated for the first time.

The list helps scientists and medical companies focus attention on threats for which there are no effective treatments. 

It was research into Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) which pivoted into the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines which played an important role in controlling coronavirus.

We would be foolish to drop our guard. 

The number of reported cases of covid is climbing throughout the world and many people still carry masks for use in crowded or poorly ventilated areas. 

The first case outside Africa of the most virulent strain of mpox, called Clade 1, has just been recorded in Sweden.

Mr Reed, when he was speaking in June, supported the protracted delay in making enquiries about what happened after the first cases of covid arrived in Ireland in late February 2020. 

“It would have been wrong to have it too early, things were raw for people," he said.

But we should not underestimate the degree of sensitivity over answers and explanations which citizens have been waiting to receive. 

And this is fed by powerful narratives such as the TV drama Breathtaking, written by hospital consultant and former journalist Rachel Clarke.

The series, filmed in Belfast and directed by Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio, was broadcast in Ireland in February. 

It depicted how the whistle was blown on conditions within the British NHS which were wildly at odds with what the public was told during nightly briefings.

At its core is the concept of a statutory duty of candour which is a prevalent principle across the border and which has been discussed here, but never acted upon, since the Vicky Phelan case and the Meenan Report into medical negligence.

It is a subject which might usefully be revisited once we discern more about the lessons of the pandemic which, if we take the assurances of our leaders at face value, must now be imminent.

Lawyers in a league of their own

There is a dogged strand of opinion which affects to dislike “foreign” sports. And it has had a bad week.

First there is news that plans for a national stadium to provide a home for that most quintessential of English sports, cricket, have been greenlighted for Dublin in time for the 2030 Men’s T20 World Cup.

Meanwhile, this weekend sees the return of the bread and circuses show which is the Premier League, the competition which has millions of detractors and, in a simultaneous triumph of cognitive dissonance, millions of fans.

Season 2024/25 will have significant challenges, not least the obsession with accountancy and “profit and sustainability rules” which has dislodged VAR, for the time being, as the subject de jour among fans, social media and radio phone-ins.

Add to that the forthcoming hearing of 115 charges against Manchester City (mark September 15 on the fixtures list); the promise of more heavy-handed intervention from a politically-appointed “regulator” and the fact that the transfer market increasingly resembles a people-trafficking racket. All create a profusion of noises off to distract us from the field of play.

At least the Irish Examiner soccer writers know what’s important. 

Two thirds of them predict that Arsenal, a club with long historic links to the Republic, will be champions for the first time in more than two decades.

That, at least, will please the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, season ticket holder in the West Stand of the Emirates Stadium, and part of a Downing Street lineage which includes John Major (Chelsea), Tony Blair (Newcastle), and David Cameron (Aston Villa, he said). 

None of whom saw their teams declared champions while in office.

Let battle commence in a season which promises to be like no other. 

And in which the lawyers may have to play a blinder.

Anxieties over a generation in crisis

The news that youth mental health is now in “global crisis” should provide a terrible shock to society. 

But the warnings have long been there and have their roots in the expansion of what history will define as the social media era.

A new study, which included input from University College Dublin’s Professor Barbara Dooley and published in The Lancet Psychiatry Journal, concludes that the overall need for mental health support for people aged between 10 and 24 has increased by 50% over the past two decades.

Mental illnesses now account for 45% of the overall burden of disease internationally in people in that group. 

Three quarters of such incidences have manifested by the age of 25.

The report cites intergenerational inequality, unregulated social media, precarity of employment, a lack of access to housing, and the climate crisis as principal factors “driving a global surge in mental ill health among youth.” 

It was published in the same week that Sinn Féin launched its own mental health action plan with its commitment to replace the current Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) system.

Recent reviews have highlighted, among other worries, long waiting lists for high-risk referrals and children being prescribed “inappropriate medication”.

This picture of a service at breaking point and lacking both staff and bed capacity must worry us, and all the more so because it has been well-publicised during a decade of inaction.

There is a bill before the Cabinet which promises a significant overhaul of the State’s mental health laws and which Minister Mary Butler says “will further modernise, reform, and protect the rights of people with mental health difficulties in the decades ahead”. 

But an upgrade is long overdue, and delays are dangerous, not only to sufferers but to victims as well.

In Britain, which struggles with similar problems and the failures of what was once described as “care in the community” — in effect a cost-saving programme — there are manifest examples of the lack of joined-up thinking.

These can be seen in the instances of derelict people on the streets and, at their grimmest, in moments of inexplicable violence such as the case last year in Nottingham where the daughter of an Irish mother was killed by a man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Valdo Calocane, 32, stabbed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65. 

Grace was the granddaughter of a professor emeritus who was a former chief executive of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

Calocane was sectioned four times in the past three years, and regularly lied to his doctor about taking his anti-psychotic medication.

These cases are, sadly, not a rarity. 

The era when mental illness could be downgraded to “one of those unfortunate things” is well and truly over.