Covid-19 ‘a global turning point’ says local tech boss based in NZ

Just two days before Ireland went into lockdown, New Zealand did so, under terms quite similar to those introduced here.

“There is a real sense that we are all in this together,” says Mullingar woman Niamh McNamee, who moved to New Zealand three years ago with her Kiwi partner Garth and their seven-year-old daughter Aoibhe.

Niamh is head of commercial performance for IT for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, a job that counts as a state-certified essential role – and one that has seen her clock up 12 hour days for the three solid weeks up to the weekend just past.

“I haven’t actually experienced lockdown: I go in to work every day,” says Niamh, daughter of Seamus and Mary McNamee of Bellview Heights.

For Aoibhe and Garth, being at home is, however, now an everyday reality. The big change for Aoibhe is that instead of attending her real school, she now has “Daddy school” – and she is loving spending her days at home with her father, who has been doing his job as IT systems administrator for Wellington Regional Council from the family’s home in Karori, a suburb of Wellington.

Apart from the kick of having so much time with his daughter, Garth is enjoying the novelty of being able to make bread every morning.

But levity aside, Niamh doesn’t sugar-coat her belief that we are witnessing the end of an era: “I cannot see a point in time when we will have open borders like we have had in the past. I think that is behind us now,” she says bluntly.

On a personal level, that’s not an insignificant fact for someone living so far from her parents and her two brothers, Seamus (Mullingar) and Ciarán (Dublin).

“Luckily, I got home last July and my parents got out here late last year, and they were here until January 31.”

When the McNamees senior left, it was with the reasonable hope of perhaps travelling back to New Zealand in the future.

However, the possibility of planning such a trip no longer exists: “It could be years before people are travelling again if you think about it,” says Niamh.

She first became conscious of what is now known as Covid-19 around January. “Then events started to move very quickly here in New Zealand – and working in government as well, you are a little bit closer to that; so before we know it, we were in ‘BCP’ (business continuity planning) mode.”

That led quickly to the realisation that people would need to be able to work remotely, so there was an urgent drive to get the network up to scratch and ensure remote working was feasible – and as the ministry for which Niamh works is New Zealand’s largest, including sub-agencies, it has meant ensuring access for approximately 6,500 users.

Fortunately Karori is just three miles from the office, and so Niamh doesn’t have to endure a long commute nor public transport. Fortunately too, whenever she gets the time to go out in the 2km exercise limit, she is in a lovely area.

“Wellington is such an interesting city because we have hills, so I can go out the door and I can go 2kms vertically- and not meet anyone.”

The New Zealand lockdown is for four weeks, but Niamh believes it will probably be extended. People are taking it well enough, and while there was some panic buying, it was not on the scale seen elsewhere.

“We are largely self-sustainable – our meat, our butter, our dairy is all produced in New Zealand and our fruit and vegetables, so we won’t run out of fresh produce,” says Niamh.

To ensure the supply chains are kept intact and operational, a number of government taskforces have been set up – just one aspect of the many actions taken to try to protect New Zealand and its citizens at this time and into the future. There was also a massive stimulus package announced.

Niamh cannot speak highly enough of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, describing her as “awesome” – not least for her way of reaching out to children during the crisis – even promoting a “teddy bear hunt” for which homeowners and businesses people left teddy bears in their windows for children to spot when out on their 2km exercise trips with parents.

Niamh has also been impressed by Ms Ardern’s practice of addressing the country in a daily YouTube message.

“Jacinda made the call to lock us down before coronavirus took hold in the community. So we did not get to the point where we were all looking at each other suspiciously,” Niamh continues.

The country has also not clamped down excessively on the public since the lockdown began: “I get the sense that they are not strictly enforcing it: there isn’t a whole lot more police presence.

“What they are doing is they are appealing to people morally, I think it’s more that they are saying ‘this is the right thing to do if we want to save lives’.”

As far as Niamh can see, people are complying.

Looking to the future, Niamh sees the Covid-19 as something that will mark a major global turning point.

“I am hoping that this will bring some change, not just for the climate and for reducing pollution, but also to see that we are one world. We are not a group of divided places.

“We are one world. What happens in one place affects another.

“This is a huge wake-up call at global level and it’s an opportunity for us to look at how our poor countries are able to manage – I’m thinking of the migrant camps and countries like Africa, where they don’t have as much money as we do in Ireland and New Zealand.

“It is an opportunity for us to rethink what ‘global’ really means; what ‘globalism’ really means. It’s not just about capital: it’s about people.”