The Omicron variant

True, but as usual people seem to keep their thinking polarised, it's either one thing or the other. The facts are: New Zealand with a population roughly the same size as Ireland has had forty two deaths from covid, with a fatality rate of 0.38(one of the lowest on the planet), we've had five and a half thousand dead with a fatality rate of over 1%. Their number of infected overall is close to the number we've buried. So on that score NZ is leagues ahead of our efforts. Where they dallied was in vaccine rollouts(though not as bad as Australia). Indeed the Aussies with a population of nearly 26 million have had deaths nearly a fifth of ours, even with their screwups over vaccines.

The other facts are: New Zealand(and Australia to a large extent) are in the arse end of nowwhere, with far less leaky borders anyway and neither shares a border. It was much easier for them to effect a border lockdown than for us as we're more of a hub and closer to the action. On the other hand we could have done a lot more, but didn't. We had the daft situation during the first lockdown where a convoy of Travellers coming from the UK, which was pox central at the time, who entered the country via a port, caravans in tow, who travelled the country, through god knows how many roadblocks and set up camp in the Curragh, government land. While the rest of us had to explain to Guards why we were going to the shops. You couldn't make that level of incompetence up.