Dr. Holohan's return on Monday will mean Dr. Ronan Glynn was CMO for 93 days and chaired NPHET for 94 days, given his 1st meeting was the evening of July 2nd.

In that time he has done a thoroughly phenomenal job, under utmost pressure, in guiding us into the winter.

For 13 consecutive weeks under Ronan's guidance, Ireland were below the EU/EEA average for both new cases and deaths.

It means as infection was rising throughout the continent, not once did Ireland have such a bad week to accelerate beyond the European average.

14-day cases per 100,000:

Week 28 (ending July 15):

EU/EEA average: 11.6
Ireland: 4.0

Week 30:

EU/EEA average: 18.8
Ireland: 5.3

Week 32:

EU/EEA average: 30.0
Ireland: 17.9

Week 36:

EU/EEA average: 66.0
Ireland: 36.1

Week 38:

EU/EEA average: 94.0
Ireland: 68.7

ECDC's surveillance report came out today and Ireland are maintaining their spot far below the European average of infection.

Week 39 (ending Sunday September 27th):

EU/EEA average: 113.6
Ireland: 84.5 https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/surveillance/weekly-surveillance-report

Now, that's no small feat to guide a country through a 3-month period outperforming the average expectation in Europe.

There's a relatively small number of countries that have that unbroken streak below the average, without a blip or surge above it, and Ireland are one of them.

On evening of July 2nd when Dr. Glynn chaired his first NPHET meeting, there was 1,738 deaths.

Today there are 1,806 deaths, meaning in 90 days there were 68 deaths.

Under his guidance, fewer than 1 person died every day in the entire country, during a raging global pandemic.

When he chaired that first meeting, there was 521,808 dead globally.

There is now 1,021,456 dead according to Worldometer's count.

Half a million people lost their life in the world in those 2 months and Ireland contributed 68 to that total.

That's a steady hand.

And the job of a Chief Medical Officer is not to give popular advice.

It's to give the right advice as they see fit and not to give a damn how it's received.

It's a thankless task because regardless if your advice improves or worsens things, some people will be angry at you.

He didn't bottle the big call when it came to Kildare, Laois and Offaly.

It was always going to be deeply unpopular but, more than that, it was creating a precedent.

He had the courage to give the advice and today Kildare, Laois and Offaly are all below the national average.

The E in NPHET stands for Emergency, something routinely forgotten.

Any of us taking on added responsibility during a crisis or emergency would find it challenging.

To stand up to that extra pressure in near-unprecedented times, speaks volumes to his character.

His clarity of communication, his empathy towards younger people, his refusal to indulge in blame games or stigmatization of people, his willingness to advocate for difficult measures...

Those are textbook qualities you want in crisis leadership.

Those excellent numbers under his tenure were not possible without buy-in of Irish society.

I am giving him praise for guidance but I will always reserve the most praise for Irish people.

It's your hand washing, social distancing, mask-wearing that saw that period of stability.

Still, we now head into a challenging winter, in Ireland and Europe.

We are a small handful of unlucky super-spreading events away from a skyrocketing of infection and death.

We can thank Ronan for his guidance by doing our best individually to try prevent it from happening.

We may not have the best of anything in this country, but we do have some of the best people from our hospitals to labs.

He has shown himself to be among the best.

I hope his family is proud of his efforts, they should be.