How Do You Solve a Problem like Varadkar?

Carefully parsing the media over the weekend – or such media as were arsed working the weekend – one gets the feeling that An Tánaiste and the government are safe. An Tánaiste will have to say sorry to all the boys and girls in the class, but that will be the end of it.

Your correspondent is not so sure. Besides; if the media had their way the story would never have broken in the first place. This story came from the clear blue sky – Village magazine is by no means mainstream – and it was not mentioned on RTÉ at all until different TDs started asking questions on Saturday afternoon. Once these genies escape their bottles it’s not easy know just how to get them back. So let’s examine the battlefield and do a little war-gaming, to pass the long winter’s day away.

The Substantive Issue

Did Leo Varadkar behave unethically in leaking confidential information to his buddy while Leo Varadkar was Taoiseach? Well, dur. Of course he did. If there were such things as ethics in Irish public life, he’d be gone already, and anybody who says any different is either too innocent for the world or else on the payroll.

Consider recent resignations from public office. Why did Alan Shatter have to resign as Minister for Justice? Why did Enda Kenny have to resign as Taoiseach? Why did Frances Fitzgerald have to resign? What did they do wrong that went so far beyond the bounds that they had to go?

The answer is: nothing. Each went because it was politically expedient to throw him or her under the bus. Shatter went to save the guards from being exposed as being up to some very funny business indeed (and the fact that nobody likes him). Enda went because Leo decided that his time had come, and he had enough people in Fine Gael to agree with him. Frances went for the same reason as Shatter. Nothing else.

Therefore, the realpolitik of An Tánaiste’s position isn’t whether or not he behaved badly, because he certainly did, but is it politically expedient to make him pay? That is a matter of political judgement and political gamesmanship, and entirely in the hands of certain of the parties in the Dáil. Let’s look at them one-by-one.

Fianna Fáil

It is surely Micheál Martin’s dearest wish that An Tánaiste had managed to hit a higher bar than that achieved by former Minister for Agriculture Barry Cowen in attempting to weasel his way out of the mess. Sadly, he did not. The response from An Tánaiste on Saturday was watery in the extreme, and is worth nothing. There is no solace for Martin there. Therefore, he is hopeful for someone, somewhere, in the other parties to save him from having to make a potentially painful decision.

The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party want Varadkar gone, not least because they hate his guts. There was some quite bullish tweeting from Deputies O’Callaghan and MacSharry on Saturday, and from Senator Dooley. However, every time the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party has been asked to stand up and be counted, they have run for the hills like spring lambs. It is difficult to believe this situation will be any different.

The Green Party

I shouldn't laugh but.... https://t.co/Lejyb3k6pn

— Neasa Hourigan TD (@neasa_neasa) October 31, 2020

There exists a perpetual battle between the Green Party and the Labour Party to see who is the most virtuous of them all. This gets especially nasty when one or the other has taken the shilling and accepted a place in government. Each goes into government swearing that things will be different this time and each comes out battered and bruised, things having been exactly the same this time, actually.

Does Deputy Ryan have the stones to do a Ruairí Quinn and demand a head? If he does and gets the head, Deputy Ryan doesn’t get any gyp from the bolshy wing of his party from now until Christmas. If Deputy Ryan asked for a head and doesn’t get it, he can go to the country on the Ethics ticket. If he behaves as Deputy Hourigan seems to suspect he will, then his own head will soon be in a basket, beyond all shadow of a doubt. There’s only so much tree huggers can live with before they reach for their hatchets.

Fine Gael

The most delicious dilemma of them all. The fundamental question is this: do Fine Gael want to fight an election on whether or not their leader was right to leak a confidential document to his buddy when that document was considerably to his buddy’s material benefit? If they are, then Leo is going nowhere and he will dare either Deputy Martin or Deputy Ryan to oppose him. If they so dare, Deputy Varadkar then pulls the plug, the government collapses and either the President asks the parties to see if they can form another government without an election, or we all head for the polls.

Where this gets spicy is if there’s a majority of the Fine Gael party who do not want to fight an election on those terms. Pascal Donohue was on This Week on RTÉ Radio 1 defending An Tánaiste to the hilt, but of course Deputy Donohue was one of the first to back Leo for leader in the first place. There has been so statement at time of writing (Sunday night, about ten o’clock) from either Simon Coveney, Simon Harris or Helen McEntee, the contenders for the leadership should a vacancy arise. The longer there is no word from them, the more nervous Deputy Varadkar should get.

If Fine Gael turn against Varadkar, Micheál Martin’s problem is solved. Deputy Varadkar is duly defenestrated, a new leader of Fine Gael is elected and the government survives until Christmas, probably. If they don’t, then there are decisions to make. And the decisions will of course be influenced by Sinn Féin and the Labour Party.

The Labour Party

The Labour Party has the doubtful gift of sounding wonderful while in opposition. One imagines them parading through City Hall in their togas, such is the height of their rhetoric. They have been strangely silent so far on this issue, but Deputy Kelly has a combative personality. It’s hard to imagine him resisting going for a jugular.

But it’s going to take more than the Labour Party rattling their sabres to get the government’s attention should they decide to dig foxholes and wait out the shelling, because the Labour Party is not what you’d call numerous. Neither is it likely to be a substantial player in the formation of the next government. Unlike Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin

Is this Leo Varadkar affair a Rubicon for Sinn Féin? The argument for them sitting dumb on this is their own tremendous need to show themselves as an acceptable party of government, a responsible party of government. Responsible parties don’t collapse governments in the middle of pandemics just because someone was a bit indiscrete with confidential secrets while Taoiseach, do they? One sees the bigger picture.

However. Sinn Féin incredible result in the last election was because of a perception that Sinn Féin were not like the other parties. If they give Varadkar a pass on this, they are exactly like other parties – something that will be loudly noted by the entities further on Sinn Féin’s left, such as Deputies Murphy, Smyth and the rest. This is a nightmare for Sinn Féin. Deputies Murphy, Smyth and rest will never challenge Sinn Féin for a place in government but they can, and have, cost Sinn Féin seats that they can’t do without.

It is interesting also to note that, ever since Dr Holohan returned to head up NPHET and his letter advocating a Level-5 lockdown was leaked, Sinn Féin have been notably less strident in their criticism of the government. Could it be that the party has echoed St Augustine and prayed “Lord, let us govern, but not yet?” 

The War Game

As it is now, if I were Mary-Lou McDonald, I would table a motion of no confidence in the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Leo Varadkar and see who salutes. I can’t risk being outmanoeuvred on my left, and my luck will be out should this manoeuvring precipitate an election. But I cannot allow myself to be outmanoeuvred on my left, and this is a risk I must take if I am to win all.

Most of the rest of the Opposition would support  a motion of No Confidence in Leo, as they’re not likely to be all that fond of him either, and know a sacrifice will help keep the public calm. A Deputy McGrath or a Healy-Rae may go rogue, for divilment, but otherwise it’s the canny thing to do.

This then passes the hand grenade back to Fine Gael. If Fine Gael decide they don’t want to face the country defending Leo, then out the window he goes and the crisis is over. Alternatively, if Fine Gael decide Leo is the boy for good or for ill, then the hand grenade becomes two hand grenades, one of which falls into Deputy Ryan’s lap, and the other into An Taoiseach’s.

In the best case scenario, Both Deputies Martin and Ryan agree that Leo has got to go. It will make the election look more worthwhile, and may cause Fine Gael to recalibrate exactly how up for battle Fine Gael really are, realising the strength of Fianna Fáil and the Greens together is greater than the sum of their parts.

In the worst case scenario, Deputies Martin and Ryan defend Varadkar because they are scared, and this will surely seal their doom. Ryan’s certainly, because the Greens have proved more restive since this most peculiar of governments was formed.

If Martin could have Varadkar defenestrated it would be the best news he’s had in nine years, but again that is not in his control. That is entirely in the gift of Fine Gael, which paints a very vivid picture of just how far Fianna Fáil have fallen in ten years.

TL;DR

Somebody is losing a head over this. It’s just a question of who, and how many.

The World Will Not End if the Greens Vote No

It would be an exaggeration to describe the current state of Irish politics as being like three-dimensional chess. However, there can be no doubt that acey-deucey it ain’t. There are many balls in the air at the moment, and how they fall, and in what order, will determine what happens next.

This isn’t a fault in the system. If anything, it’s a good thing. It means that our politics is transitioning from the civil war structure that’s existed since the foundation of the state to whatever exactly it is that’s going to replace it. And while all this is going on, a government still has to be formed, taxes have levied, bills have to be passed, debts have to be paid – all the everyday housekeeping of politics.

Right now the formation of the next government hinges on the thoughts of the two-and-a-half to three thousand members of the Green Party, north and south of the border. The current dynamics within the Green Party are fascinating and complex, as outlined in the diagram.

Are the Greens an environment first, socially progressive second party, or a socially progressive first, environmental second party? Are they more pressure group than political party? What are we to made of the people who negotiated the deal voting against it, or the remarkable intervention of the Northern Green leader, Claire Bailey, MLA, yesterday?

Each of those alone is worth a solid thousand words. But the particular point of interest this morning is: what happens if the membership shoot the deal down on Friday? What then?

On the face of it, the Greens are conducting a remarkable experiment in popular democracy, and are being thanked very little for it. The Greens’ membership ballot on the program for government is utterly orthogonal to Irish political history and tradition.

Micheál Martin made a big deal of listening to grass roots when he became leader of Fianna Fáil, and has made a point of ignoring them in the nine years since. Fine Gael, bless them, never even bothered to pretend. The party that likes to tell the country what’s good for it also likes to tell its own members what’s good for them.

The question for the Greens is if this popular democracy renders the party incapable of practical action. In a nice piece of modularity, this is the Greens’ political dilemma too – does their commitment to Green issues mean that just can’t function in a country where people travel by car and burn turf and raise cattle?

If the Greens were a normal political party, the anti-deal positions of Claire Bailey and Francis Noel Duffy and Neasa Hourigan and the rest would be just so much theatre, like Ringer fulminating over Fianna Fáil perfidy at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis. These being the Greens though, they might put their money where their mouths are, and the system isn’t built for shocks like that.

Pat Leahy wrote a remarkable column in the Irish Times on Saturday, outlining the land of milk and honey that awaits the Greens if they pass the deal, and the barren and empty wastes that await them should they be so foolish as to refuse to eat their sprouts.

Coincidentally, this analysis is also the analysis of the Fine Gael party, who would see the Green’s failure to pass the deal as proof that all avenues have been exhausted, leaving An Taoiseach no option but to call another election.

Francis Noel Duffy told Gavan Reilly on Reilly’s On the Record radio show that he doesn’t see a second election as being inevitable at all. There are other combinations of parties available, many of which did better at the polls than either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, and are more ideologically suited to Green issues than Fine Gael in particular. If this deal is voted down, perhaps the President would ask the leaders of those parties to see if they could somehow form a government before admitting defeat and returning to the people?

One of Leahy’s pro-deal arguments is that if a second election were held, the Greens would be mashed by Sinn Féin. It’s not clear why this would be the case. Their bases are different and, while Fine Gael would damn the Greens as putting squirrels before people, the Greens can counter that if a party doesn’t have principles it has nothing. That’s an argument with a strong appeal. Also, the Greens would go into the election with a higher profile than they had in February and in a position to get some of that huge left-wing vote that went to Sinn Féin last time out, to say nothing of the Fianna Fáil carcass from which all parties and none will feast.

In point of fact, the Greens and Sinn Féin could form a transfer pact for a second election - "you voted for a left-wing government, but they wouldn’t let you have one. Vote for us now, and you won’t be denied this time. Transfer Left!" Pigeons, meet cat.

Your correspondent is not a member of the Green Party and has no vote on the program for government. However, If I did have a vote, I would vote against the deal. Not because I don’t think it’s green enough or because it doesn’t tick enough social justice boxes; the uncosted program for government is built on sand anyway, and what’s in it won’t matter a damn once the recession hits.

I would vote no because I don’t care for being threatened with terrible and immediate war should I vote in a way that doesn’t suit some people. Bullies have to be stood up to where-ever they are met.

The world will not end if the Greens vote no; it won’t be like a new Covid strain sweeping in from the East, or a no-deal Brexit, or a foot-and-mouth outbreak, or famine or penal laws or the return of Cromwell. It’ll be just a question of politicians sitting around a table and cutting another deal, like politicians are meant to do. Roll on Judgement Day.

Half-a-Million Voters Have the Right to be Represented

Sinn Féin TDs: Children of a Lesser God?

There is a strange unanimity current in Irish political media at the moment. Unanimity would be odd at the best of times; these are not the best of times. Nevertheless, an accepted wisdom has developed, and this accepted wisdom can be summed up in four points.

First, the next government will a coalition dominated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Second, there is no possible alternative to this arrangement. Third, it is the patriotic duty of certain smaller parties in the Dáil to make up the numbers in this coalition, and finally, there’s nothing very, very odd about points one to three as outlined.

The absence of any “now, wait a minute” impulse in all this is surprising. For instance, Pat Leahy of the Irish Times has written about the gulf in understanding between what the politicians thought the last election was about and what the people thought the last election was about. The politicians thought the election would be dominated by Brexit, and how things would break between Fine Gael’s expert handing of these delicate tripartite negotiations between Ireland, Britain and the EU, or else Fianna Fáil’s nobility and patriotism in giving Fine Gael a free hand to do what needed to be done.

The people, in their ingratitude, insisted on making the election about housing and health, subjects that were that much more real to the people’s own day-to-day lives and experiences.

The election was a reality-check for political consensus. Why, then, is it business as usual for the political establishment? Why isn't so shocking a result having a tangible effect in terms of governance?

One of the more thoughtful pro-Brexit arguments among our neighbours was the idea that, be it for good or for ill, the people had spoken. You may not like what they said, or you may be horrified by what they had said, but that they had spoken could not be denied. If Britain were a democracy, then politicians had no option but to accept the expressed will of the people.

There are not many buyers for that notion of accepting the expressed will of the people in - hateful phrase! - Official Ireland. Half a million citizens voted Sinn Féin in the general election. Where are those voices finding expression currently? Where is the pundit telling a Prime Time presenter that there is something wrong in the denial of that mandate? Where are the articles speaking for those half-million?

There are complexities to the situation. Governments are formed by seat-counts, rather than vote-counts, and if Sinn Féin did not run enough candidates to maximise their incredible vote, that is Sinn Féin’s problem and not anyone else’s. Of course this is true. But it doesn’t explain why Fianna Fáil’s 37 seats – not counting the Ceann Comhairle – count and Sinn Féin’s 37 seats do not, or why Fine Gael’s 35 seats count, and Sinn Féin’s do not.

The political commentary is reminiscent of the late Archbishop of Dublin, Most Rev John Charles McQuaid, preaching that nothing had changed after Vatican II. The 2020 general election voting was so revolutionary that the political correspondents are struggling to process it, and are trying to deal with it by pretending it never happened at all.

This is very dangerous thinking. If the election has been rendered null and void by COVID-19 fair enough; let’s have another election, and settle it that way. What’s completely out of the question is this ideas of ignoring the result of the election entirely. Ignoring the result of the election is a sure-fire confirmation that some people’s worst suspicions about the state are true.

Specifically, the suspicion that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, that there is a permanent government that doesn’t change, and that permanent government is run by faceless figures who are members of clubs to which you can never belong.

There was one particular factor in the last election that should have made all psephologists sit up and take notice. All through the history of the state, the Irish electorate has placed personality above politics. The Irish electorate votes locally first, nationally second. That’s why politicians attend so many funerals. If they don’t attend funerals, people won’t get to know them, and if they’re not known, they won’t get elected.

That went out of the window in the 2020 election. Sinn Féin had a TD elected in Kildare who went on her holidays instead of canvassing. Sinn Féin did not just get a blown-in elected in Clare, but a candidate who had blown in from Dublin. Dublin!

And these patterns repeated across the country. It’s all very well for pol corrs to be briefed by special advisors with stories about Shinners with British scalps around their tummy and pockets full of stolen money over big plates of Comeragh Hill lamb, spring vegetables and beautiful barley marjoram sauce. But it's too late to go bitching about the Shinners now.

Those Sinn Féin votes were cast all across the country, north, south, east and west, by rich people and poor people, by country people and townies, by people with nothing in common except a feeling that something has very wrong in a country where you obey all the rules and can’t afford a house for you and your family.

Politics is a contact sport and high-mindedness is a poor shield, but good God, how can so seismic a mandate be ignored? It is natural that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would seek to conserve their power – even if it is a little disappointing that there isn’t even some slight acknowledgement of how things have changed – but for the press, whose job it is to hold these jokers to account, to normalize Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael marginalizing of Sinn Féin’s democratically-expressed mandate is noticeably pathetic.

What should be particularly worrying is the question of how the half-million who voted for Sinn Féin will take the ignoring of their expressed wish and the confirmation of their worst fears. The guess here is: badly. Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind, and we might all be destroyed in the coming storm.

Liadh Ní Riada Can Win Sinn Féin the Presidency

Sinn Féin can claim an astonishing double-result this autumn if they contest the Presidency. Firstly, they can strike another devastating blow to Fianna Fáil, who were too quick to row in behind a second term for President Higgins. But more importantly, by selecting Liadh Ní Riada as their candidate, Sinn Féin can make a profound statement of nationalism and Irish identity, the kind of which we haven’t heard in at least half-a-century.

Why Ní Riada? Because of who she is and what she represents.

Liadh Ní Riada is the daughter of Seán Ó Riada, the man who saved Irish music from doom in the early 1960s. We have made a bags of many, many things as an independent state among the nations of the world, but two things we have to show for ourselves are our games and our music.

Before Seán Ó Riada, people were ashamed of the music. It was strictly for hicks. What made the difference was the music’s embrace by Ó Riada, because Ó Riada came from the classical tradition. He knew the table settings, as it were.

Ó Riada recognised traditional music’s inherent dignity, and brought it to the concert hall. And people who had thought nothing of the music heard the orchestration of Róisín Dubh that Ó Riada did for Mise Éire and thought: hold on – is that us? To echo Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Irish Nation suddenly realised that this music, which they had considered a joke, poor potsherd, was actually immortal diamond and worthy of admiration all over the world.

Ó Riada founded Ceoltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, from whom came the Chieftains. The Clancys and the Dubliners were the beloved sons of the masses but without the Chieftains the music would have sunk back to obscurity. Instead, it lives, survives and thrives.

Seán Ó Riada himself cannot run for the presidency. He died young, in 1971, two months after his fortieth birthday. But Liadh Ní Riada, in coming where she’s from and in being who she is, can be the avatar of what Ó Riada believed in, an Ireland Gaelic, united and free.

Because what does the President do, really? The office is the vestigial tail of the Lord Lieutenancy. It’s either a retirement home or a springboard to a cushy job in the UN or the Vatican (although that’s not going so well lately).

Perhaps the most important role of the Presidency is in telling us who we are, in being an avatar for the nation. And what better avatar than someone who believes in the causes for which independence was won, at the cost of so much blood?

At a time when it’s so hard to say what it is that makes us different, why Ireland deserves nationhood, why, God spare us, the island should be united under one flag, would it be so bad to return to first principles?

Even if she were not to win, Liadh Ní Riada could do her party some service in landing another kick to the prone body of what was once the mightiest force in Irish politics, the Fianna Fáil party.
Fianna Fáil was once renowned for its profound political sense.

DeValera said he only had to look into his heart to know what the nation was thinking. But that political sense is entirely absent from the party now as it lurches from one disaster to another.

The confidence-and-supply agreement was a good move. But everybody knew it was, to echo a phrase of the past, “a temporary little arrangement”. There was no way it could be long-lasting, because there would come a threshold when such kudos available to Fianna Fáil for putting the country first by supporting a government would all have been gained.

After that, the pendulum swings in the other direction, and Fianna Fáil gets all the blame for being in government, and none of the benefit. Fianna Fáil were always going to pull the plug.

Except they didn’t. Opportunities arose one by one, and passed by one by one as Mícheál Martin steadfastly refused to take advantage. The revelations about the Gardaí making up traffic violation reports was the sort of dream chance that oppositions of other eras requested from Santa in their Christmas letters, and still Fianna Fáil held fire.

And now, it is they who have presented an open goal to Sinn Féin, in a misunderstanding of both the age and the current political situation.

Our is a populist age. It an age of clearing swamps, and giving voices back to the people. It is an age of distrust of the establishment and cosy deals among the members of same.

Not only have Fianna Fáil backed President Higgins for a second term, they have done so absolutely, positively, with no way to back down. With Fianna Fáil now backed into a corner - the last place any sensible politician wants to be -  Sinn Féin can now run a candidate that hits Fianna Fáil in both the head and the guts.

The head, by making Sinn Féin look like a party more interested in what the people think than what is convenient for the establishment. The guts, by fielding a candidate who will be a siren song to the traditional vote of the (once) Republican Party.

Can Ní Riada win? Reader, she can win on the first count. She doesn’t even need to say anything. All they need do is play this at her rallies and the Park is hers. Go n-éirí léi.

You Can Still Be a Winner in #GE16!

Eight or so days from polling day, and some two months from the 100th Anniversary of the Rising, it seems that Irishmen and Irishwomen are determined to elect the greatest Irish stew of a Government the misfortunate nation has seen. But don’t despair reader – before you pack that Samsonite bag and hightail it to Canada, Australia or where-ever else will have you, knock some bit of crack out of the election at least by trying your hand at elecTeD, the general election 2016 game!

Devised in his simple scholar's hut, or bothán, on plains of sweet Mayo, a friend of the blog has come up with this excellent election competition. Here’s what you do:

1. Pick who’ll be elected in each constituency.
2. Send The Man a tenner via Paypal.
3. 50% of the total pot goes to the winner, and 50% goes to a charity of the winner’s choice. Simple as that.

Don’t fancy them apples? Like your competitions short and sweet? Then take a crack at this one, where you just call the seats for each party. Tenner again via Paypal, and you’re in there.

Entry is open from now until the polls close on polling day, Friday, February 26th. Throw down your tenners now, and get yourself something to cheer in this farrago of representative democracy.

The Ungrateful Electorate

Nearly half-way through the General Election campaign, it's beginning to look as though the Government’s master plan was to sit back and humbly accept the gratitude of the Irish people for the fine job they were doing. If Enda and Joan have a Plan B in a filing cabinet somewhere, right about now would be a good time to haul it out.

To get elected on the basis of the gratitude of the electorate seems a tremendously stupid idea for experienced and professional politicians to toy with but, perhaps unbeknownst even to themselves, this seems to have been exactly the Government’s plan. Stephen Collins, who has given up all pretense at being anything other than a Fine Gael cheerleader as he approaches retirement, echoed this in his piece in Saturday’s paper. “The people will surely realise how lucky they have it,” was the message between the lines of his article.

Well. They surely won’t, actually. Electorates are a mean and suspicious bunch, generally. They are always on their guard against sellers of chocolate teapots, as they ought to be – they seem to buy one every time out, after all. But instead of accepting their fate, the electorate seems to insist on reacting according to how they themselves see the country, rather than as how the political insiders see it. One day, they dream, they’ll elect a real teapot, and finally have a good cup of tea. One day.

This, perhaps, is the salient point in this most depressing of elections. It’s always been the case that there has been a distance between the ruling elite and the plain people of Ireland. John Waters explains it brilliantly in Jiving at the Crossroads and, while the country is far better educated now than it was in the 1980s, the elite still seems safely cocooned from what real people are talking about in the real world.

The rise of Sinn Féin in the current campaign is the textbook example of this. Sinn Féin always under-perform their polling, says a studio expert. Gerry Adams made a shocking balls of that TV debate, thunders an op-ed columnist. Marian Finucane has a Dr Julius Hibbert-soundalike on to talk about the – a-ha-ha – long and proud history of the Special Criminal Court, making no mention of a junior minister’s husband and special assistant’s time up before that very same dock. No point muddying the narrative, after all.

And despite all that, here are those dirty, dirty Shinners rising in the polls all the time, and in line to pick up second seats in several constituencies. And every one of those bonus seats is another step closer to power.

Sinn Fein’s rise will be watched with both glee and concern by Fianna Fáil. Glee, because although they are loathe to say it, there is a considerable tranche in Fianna Fáil who will coalesce in Government with Sinn Féin in the morning if only they could. Concern, because if the Shinners could steal the SDLP’s clothes in the North, what’s to stop them doing the very same to Fianna Fáil in the south?

Sinn Féin know how close power finally is too. Reader, have you noticed Eoin Ó Broin’s absence from Sinn Féin’s media appearances? Ó Broin is the mastermind – if that’s the word – behind current Sinn Féin economic policy, but the party is cute enough to keep him under wraps during the election, for fear of his insights – ah, threatening the recovery.

If the Government were serious about taking out Sinn Féin, they would forget about the history lessons. They would smoke out Ó Broin and make him do some sums. Hard sums. Instead, they keep harping on about the past as if the Bay City Rollers were still at the top of the charts.

The Government has the same tactic when it comes to tackling Fianna Fáil. The Indo reports that Fine Gael are to remind the electorate of “the gross and abject contempt which the Fianna Fáil party had for the people of this country,” in the words of An Taoiseach himself.

Well guess what Taoiseach? The electorate gave Fianna Fáil its worst-ever kicking for that offence five years ago, and handed you more power than any other Fine Gael leader before you. You will be judged by how you used that power.

The current Government was elected at a time of crisis and had a unique opportunity to end civil war politics for good. It failed. Enda Kenny could have led a minority Fine Gael government that would reform the state as it approached its hundredth birthday.

Instead, he chose to coalesce with Labour, his theoretical ideological opposites, because that’s the way things have always been done. Anyone who had hope for reform should have got a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach when that happened. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The Government wants praise for the recovery. The recovery that was engineered by the last government, and overseen by the Troika. But we made the hard decisions! wail the Government. Yes, they did – and blamed the Troika for every lash. Those hard decisions can’t be the Troika’s fault then and evidence of Governmental prudence and far-sightedness now.

The Government says only it can be trusted to be fiscally prudent, while shooting down the best and fairest tax they have. Do they know what they’re at at all? Have they really thought all this out, or did they think they just had to turn up and wait for the cheers?

In the final days of the election, the electorate will have to deal with the prospect of a hung Dáil. A hung Dáil is infinitely more frightening to the politicians than it is to the electorate. You see, reader, for once, the Government is right. When in Opposition, the current Government made much of Ireland having lost its economic sovereignty, and this is still the case.

Every Irish budget from here on in will be signed off by a list of people and European institutions. Frau Merkel, God bless her and keep her, doesn’t care if the homework is done by Enda Kenny or Mick Wallace, as long as the sums add up. Everything else is a detail.

Besides; seeing the scoop monkeys attempting to do their sums may be light relief for her as she faces the twin threats of the rise of militant Islam in the West and a Russia desperate for a war to distract her populace from her own issues of governance in the East. Domestic Irish politics is students’ union stuff in comparison.

Ansbacher - Time to Publish, and Be Damned

Mary Lou McDonald may have impugned the august dignity of Dáil Éireann yesterday, but she has done the plain people of Ireland some service in doing it.

The entire political establishment has known the names on this infamous Ansbacher list for some time; now, thanks to Deputy McDonald, so do we. The plain people of Ireland, for one brief moment, are in with the In Crowd, and now know what the In Crowd knows. Or at least, some of it.

Will anything come of yesterday’s events? Who knows? If the Ansbacher list is just a list of unfounded allegations, then nothing will come of it, and all this will be quickly forgotten by history.

If the Ansbacher list is the goods on the most base corruption at the heart of Irish politics, the question then arises why Mary Lou didn’t drive the blade home and quote chapter and verse on the hows and whys of the thing?

The most likely scenario is that Mary Lou does not have the goods on these allegations, and is simply lobbing a high ball into the square, on the odds-against chance of it falling her way before being swallowed up by the full-back.

This would certainly make Mary Lou guilty of an abuse of Dáil privilege, and question her standing as a parliamentarian. But then, as the current Government cares not one whit for the Dáil, as demonstrated by its eagerness to guillotine debate and to run the country by the four-person junta that is the Economic Management Council, parliamentarian isn’t the title it once was.

It is interesting that, in this moment in history where we worship “whistle-blowers” – reader, do you remember one article that ever doubted Garda McCabe or ex-Garda Wilson, that ever wondered if these guys were just doing a dog even a biteen? No; me neither – isn’t it remarkable that nobody has sat down with Mr Ryan, the current whistle-blower, with a microphone, notebook and ballpoint pen?

The Irish libel laws are incorrectly balanced in the way they favour the establishment over the right to speak out and to question, so this makes the press a little more cautious than it ought to be. The fact that the journalism industry is currently falling apart like a three-dollar suit bought in Bangkok doesn’t help either.

But in abusing the privilege of that august chamber, Dáil Éireann, Deputy McDonald has opened a window for the journalists of Ireland to earn their corn. David Davin-Power reported on the Nine O’Clock News last night that Gerard Ryan’s report to Mary Harney is seven-hundred-pages long. So now it’s time to go through that report, and start seeing if things add up or if they don’t.

Why not publish it on-line, so we all can read it? Maybe it will be some enterprising Citizen Journalist who finally cracks the case.

Either result is fine, funnily enough. If Mr Ryan is simply an obsessive or a fantasist who can’t let this thing go, we ought to know. We ought to know for the good names of those who are currently under suspicion, and we ought to know so people aren’t completely gullible about conspiracy theories.

And if Mr Ryan is correct in his allegations, then we know that biggest lie of all throughout the 2011 election campaign was that not all politicians are the same. We will know they are exactly the same, and that we must find a new way of selecting politicians, the old one being clearly exposed as not fit for purpose.

The plain people of Ireland are in the slips, straining at the start. Time to turn finally open those closets, and see what comes tumbling out.

That Troublesome Thing, Democracy

It is the nature of being a member of an elite to quickly forget what it’s like to be part of the hoi-polloi. Marie Antoinette, for instance, couldn’t conceive of a situation where people were starving. All she ever knew were sumptuous riches. She had no conception of people not having cake to eat.

Sinn Féin’s inexorable rise in the polls has the Irish political elite just as baffled as the last Queen of France. But how could the elite understand it, when they only ever talk to themselves? If they were to talk to real people living real lives in the real world, the secret of Sinn Féin’s success would be all too clear. It comes about – if you will pardon the infelicitous phrase – through process of elimination.

The current government swept to power on a manifesto of change. But all they changed were the chairs. The music remained exactly the same.

The current government did not stand up to Brussels. They did exactly what Fianna Fáil had laid out for them. The current government did not end cronyism. If anything, they brought it to newer and towering heights. And God only knows what the ongoing disaster of Irish Water will do before that debate calms down.

In the light of all this, you can see how people might be a little bit tetchy. Nobody likes being sold a pup. As for the Government’s greatest victory, the Promissory Note deal and the exit of the Troika – well, what does that mean, really?

The people were told that thirty years of hardship lay in store, thanks to perfidious Fianna Fáil and their crooked builder pals. And now everything’s grand after three years? Either the Government was lying while in opposition, or else it’s lying now. Both statements cannot be true.

So, having tried the strawberry flavour and then tried the banana flavour, the public are going to try another flavour again. And the only flavour left in the shop is Sinn Féin.

The Independents can’t form a Government. If anything, “Independent” doesn’t quite describe that eclectic group, as they nearly all have mother parties from which they are currently estranged.

Lucinda Creighton had the potential to create a new party that would, finally, end the civil war era of Irish politics. She had the moral authority that comes from giving up all she had, politically, on a point of principle, and she had a constituency desperate for change and reform.

But, perhaps through lack of vision on her own part, and certainly through extraordinary cowardice on others’ parts, Creighton could never rally people to her flag. Stephen Donnelly could have brought the Reform Alliance into life, cementing their status as fiscally responsible while take the right-wing Catholic edge off them. But he stayed put, and all Lucinda can do now is wait for Enda Kenny’s Night of the Long Knives and rejoin Fine Gael once Kenny’s head is in Mme La Guillotine’s basket.

Sinn Féin are soaking up the votes because there’s nobody else there. Fianna Fáil remain in ribbons after the 2011 election, while neither Fine Gael nor Labour realise just how betrayed so many of the people who voted for them in 2011 feel. They people didn’t get what they wanted at the last election, so now they’ll give the other crowd a try. That’s how it works, isn’t it?

The prospect of Sinn Féin in power horrifies the Irish political Establishment. As such, the media – who are as much part of the Establishment as An Taoiseach himself – have been bending over backwards to demonise Sinn Féin at every opportunity. But all they’re doing is making Sinn Féin stronger, because anybody can see the extraordinary bias in their coverage.

Mary-Lou McDonald’s expulsion from the Dáil last week is the latest case of this. All the coverage – all of it – dismissed McDonald’s expulsion as a stunt. Nobody was interested in teasing out the story a bit further.

For instance, did anybody ask if Seán Barrett is as even-handed as he ought to be in his role as Ceann Comhairle? Mary Lou McDonald’s isn’t the first name to make his bad books.

Former TD Luke Ming Flanagan has been vocally critical of Seán Barrett too. It’s not Sinn Féin’s imagination. That should make Barrett’s Ceann Comhairle-ship is a legitimate point of debate, but it’s not.

The second point is – does any of this matter? The Dáil’s theoretical purpose is to hold the executive to account, but the country is now run by a four-person junta, comprised of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The junta showed the Dáil exactly how much it mattered during the Irish Water debate. There wasn’t one. Irish Water was set up by fiat, just as things are done in any other totalitarian state.

And that’s why people are willing to give Sinn Féin a go. Because there’s nobody else there and, having been promised reform, the people still seem to kind of want it.

IN order to provide some vague alternative, the extraordinary prospect of a Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael coalition, to “safeguard democracy,” is now being floated. There is no notion that expresses the elitism of the governing classes so much as that idea.

A Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael coalition won’t stop Sinn Féin getting into government. All it will do is delay it, and ensure that Sinn Féin will have even more TDs and therefore more cabinet places in the election after next. If the people vote for Sinn Féin, they have to get them.

There is also the lesson of history in not giving the people what they voted for. Dick Spring’s Labour Party were never forgiven for denying the voice of the people in 1992.

If Sinn Féin get a mandate from the people to govern at the next election that mandate has to be respected, no matter how many stomachs churn at the prospect. That’s what democracy is – the people get to select their government, and not have their government decided by juntas and elites.

If the three establishment parties want to win more votes than Sinn Féin, they would be better off making it clear to the people why they’re worth those votes, rather than briefing against the dirty Shinners and hoping wool will be pulled over people’s eyes. The nation is sick of wool by now.

Irish Politics - Leaning Left, or Keeling Over?

First published in the Western People on Monday.

There’s nothing like seeing ourselves as others see us to find out who we really are. As such, the New York Times’ report on Saturday evening about our elections is particularly interesting.

“Ireland has taken a decisive step to the left in local and European elections,” reported the New York Times, going on to say “early returns on Saturday showed that the big winners were Sinn Féin, formerly the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and Socialist independent candidates.”

And when you read that you have to suddenly stop and say: is that what we’ve just done? Is that what’s going on here? Is Ireland, nearly one hundred years after independence, going to have its first-ever left-wing Government come the next general election? Has the wheel turned full circle for Sinn Féin?

Certainly, the fact that Sinn Féin is less and less toxic to the electorate with each passing election is clear as a bell. But it does not necessarily then follow that Leo Varadkar is correct when he suggested on Saturday that the next general election will be a two-horse race between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. There are more tea-leaves swirling around than that.

Equally, the rise of the socialist independents isn’t entirely robust as a theory. Catherine Murphy and John Halligan, both late of the Workers’ Party and both current Technical Group TDs, welcomed the rise of the independents on RTÉ as if it had something to do with them. But does it have something to do with them? Is there a red tide rising in Ireland, or is something else going on?

The success of Murphy and Halligan’s fellow Technical Group TD and future MEP if press-time polling is to trusted, Luke “Ming” Flanagan, is the most spectacular result of the election. But Ming isn’t like any other politician – the national media likes to group him with Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, but Ming is infinitely smarter than Wallace and not as ideologically tied up as Daly.

Luke Flanagan’s campaign was a textbook example of how to get elected in modern-day Ireland. He didn’t put a foot wrong in any of it. Flanagan spent the first week or ten days of the election running in the five and ten kilometre races that are all over the country now. Why? Flanagan’s biggest image problem in this constituency is that he’s a good-for-nothing layabout stoner, and he conquered that immediately by running the races and proving himself healthy as a trout. Genius.

Flanagan’s second, and no less inspired, tactic in the campaign was to loosely ally with other independents who were running in the locals. They got a slice of Flanagan’s charisma, of which he has buckets, while he got his leaflets distributed.

What was that worth? Think of it this way. On his Facebook page on April 16th, Flanagan thanked an independent candidate in Athlone for taking seven thousand leaflets to distribute. You know those bales of paper that you can buy in the supermarket for your printer at home? Seven thousand leaflets is fourteen of those bales, and would cost €4,200 to post. Genius.

But is Ming the exception or the rule? Did people vote for Luke Flanagan because he’s perceived as left-wing, or because they can’t help but like the man? Did people vote for Sinn Féin because Sinn Féin are left wing or because the anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the source and origin of the state itself, is looming and Sinn Féin seems to be the only party that wants to celebrate it, rather than hide it in some bizarre stew that also includes Passchendaele, Ypres and the sinking of the Lusitania?

It got very little coverage overall because it was a skirmish on the side of the great battles of the local and European elections, but the real soul of Irish politics could be seen in the Longford-Westmeath by-election. There were nine candidates on the ballot, of whom eight were from Westmeath and just one from Longford.

That single Longford candidate, an independent (of course) called James Morgan, entered the race late on a platform of “A Vote for Morgan is a Vote for Longford.” He polled 5,959 votes on the first count, of which 5,900 are unlikely to have come from Westmeath.

And that’s Irish politics in the nutshell. We pretend elections are about issues, but they’re not. Not really. Left/right, pro/anti Europe don’t matter a hill of beans. Irish elections are about defending the home patch because the entire culture has been set up that way for generations.

For the people of Longford to have put merit over geography is like the unilateral disarmament theory during the cold war. It seems noble, but you’re only inviting someone who isn’t noble to blow you away to Hell. Everything about the Irish system of elections is set up to ensure the continuance of this parish pump culture, where the back yard is more important than the nation.

Why are chronically ill children being denied medical cards? Why has something terribly rotten at the heart of the Garda Síochána been allowed to fester unchecked? Why will we be paying for water that we can’t even see through, to say nothing of drink?

Because the Irish political system makes fighting over whether Ballyglenna or Ballyknock loses its post office more important than the health of the nation’s children, the policing of the state, or access to clean water.

Is Ireland leaning to the left? Only insofar as we’ve decided to chase our own tails anti-clockwise for a change. Above anything else, Ireland needs reform of its political culture to elect a new type of politician and bury civil war politics for once and for all. It then needs comprehensive public service reform so it can raise sufficient taxes to protect the vulnerable, something it cannot do currently in the culture of wanton waste.

It will take twenty-five or thirty years for these things to come to pass. But until they do, until we have a functional democratic system instead of one ruled by clientelism, favoritism and nepotism, all the blood shed for Irish freedom will have been shed for nothing. Every precious drop of it.

Hello Again, Square One

First published in the Western People on Monday.

The Houses of the Oireachtas rise on Thursday for the Easter break, and do not return (descend? Hardly an inappropriate verb) until May 6th. Siesta time in days gone by, whatever the whining from the members, but not this year. This year there are two elections coming to the boil over the holidays, and every party expects boots on the ground to get the vote out.

The sovereign nation was told that things would never be the same again as the votes of the last election were being counted, the election that routed Fianna Fáil and saw the current Government sweep to power on a five-point-plan ticket. Things, we were told, would never be the same again.

Well. That didn’t work out, did it? A recent opinion poll in the Irish Times saw Fianna Fáil neck-and-neck with Fine Gael, the Government parties using their huge majority to protect the Minister for Justice at the cost of a massive amount of public goodwill. The Government had a mountain of public goodwill when elected. It’s safe to say the needle is now as near to zero as makes no difference.

Enda Kenny, had he so chosen, could have created a Second Republic three years ago by claiming a single-party mandate and daring Fianna Fáil to support him as he carried out Fianna Fáil’s own Troika-dictated blueprint for recovery. The moment Fianna Fáil’s support quivered, Enda could damn them as traitors to the recovery, run to the country and achieve not only the first-ever Fine Gael overall majority, but the end of Fianna Fáil for good and for always.

Enda Kenny choose the more stable option in coalescing with Labour, but now, bizarre though it sounds, the country is too stable. The Crash seemed like a wake-up call at the time, a painful lesson that the state has been run badly and could never be run the same way again.

But nothing has changed. Yes, the bailout is over and the sky didn’t fall in, but what has changed as regards the fundamental structures of the state? The recent controversies would suggest: nothing. Nothing at all has changed, or will ever change.

And as such, the pendulum swings back to its default position and Fianna Fáil, having being laid out on its back by the General Election, could be standing on its own two feet again come the summer, and chomping at the bit for the next general election.

Irish politics has been on a twenty-year cycle since the Second World War. Fianna Fáil governs for sixteen years, the country tires of them and gives the other crowd a go.

Even though it’s been sixteen long years since the other crowd were in charge, they’ve managed to use that time to learn nothing about how to last for longer than one term when they get back. It is genuinely extraordinary.

Last week a British junior minister had to resign because a claim of £45,000 in expenses to which she was not entitled.

In Ireland the Minister for Justice is at the centre of controversies that include using Garda information as a political smear, phone-tapping (official), phone-tapping (unofficial), not reading letters that are his duty to read and the Lord knows what else. One of those alone should have cost his job. Not one of them did, nor ever looked likely to, either.

Where will this all lead? In a game where a week is a famously long time, it’s a risk to project into years. But we’re all friends here so let’s take a shot.

The mystery about who gets elected from our current European super-constituencies exists in inverse proportion to how very little it matters. We could send the Shamrock Rovers first XI for all the difference it’d make. Toothless tigers. Pointless.

What is more interesting are the local elections, and how badly the Government parties fare. Fine Gael and Labour celebrated the exit of the Troika, but they haven’t had a moment’s luck since. And if the local elections are a disaster for the Government parties, could we be looking at a double-heave?

Joan Burton has made noises recently about the need for Eamon Gilmore to have a Ministry based in Ireland, but it’s more likely she’s doing that to twist his tail rather than launch her own bid. Gilmore will go down with his ship. Anyone who took over now would take the blame for the likely massacre at the next general election, and who wants that?

As for Fine Gael, Enda Kenny’s stubborn loyalty to Alan Shatter has depleted his goodwill reserves within the party. The sensible thing to do was to either pension Shatter off or else simply fire him. The longer the thing went on, the more it cost Kenny.

And Kenny’s enemies have never gone away. The question for conspirators now is whether or not to launch their heave before or after Phil Hogan is made European Commissioner, as seems to be the general expectation in the corridors of power. Hogan is Kenny’s chief lieutenant – Kenny will be more vulnerable without Hogan to keep the troops in line. However, if Kenny is sufficiently vulnerable after the local elections, the rebels may decide to treat themselves, on the basis that two heads are better than one.

Independents will be the big winners in the locals, but the big winners in terms of the next general election will be Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, of course. The commentariat insist that the Sinn Féin rise is due to Mary Lou McDonald’s undeniably impressive performances on TV. The opinion polls say that Gerry Adams has the highest leader-satisfaction in the country. So it’s not easy reconcile those opposites.

The real turning point of the next election, then, will be whether Fianna Fáil are the majority or minority party in coalition, and how broad will that coalition have to be. We are too far out to tell, but it’s hard to see the Government turning their fortunes around short of a heave, and the Reform Alliance have missed the most open goal since the foundation of the state. Hello again, Square One. This is Ireland. We’re back.

Civil War Politics is Alive and Well in Ireland

The Presidential election, which had been so boring but has now sprung into spiteful life, has already proved one thing beyond all doubt: civil war politics is alive, well and thriving in Ireland.

Martin McGuinness’ entry, and his very strong chance of victory, has galvanized a moribund Fine Gael campaign. All week they have queued up to take shots – ho, ho – at McGuinness and all he stands for. While Fianna Fáil’s footsoldiers are much more sanguine about the prospect of President McGuinness. This is the insurmountable difference between the parties; their attitudes to the North, and bloody history of island.

Fianna Fáil have been deathly quiet about McGuinness, even though it is they who are in greater political danger from the rise of Sinn Féin. But even though their existence is threatened by the rise of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil apparatchiks can’t muster the level of vitriol that blows up like a volcano in every Fine Gael heart at the very thought of a Shinner about the place.

Part of that Fianna Fáil quietude could be a hangover from another exercise in shooting themselves in the foot. Fianna Fáil’s declining to run a candidate in the Presidential election made sense in that the election of the First Ribbon-Cutter (thank you, Deputy Flanagan) is of secondary importance to preparing 2016 General Election candidates in the Local Elections of 2014. But they can never have imagined that Sinn Féin would pull off such a masterstroke as the entry of McGuinness. McGuinness’ candidacy has changed everything.

It is interesting to wonder if Sinn Féin would have run McGuinness if Fianna Fáil had run a candidate – An Spailpín suspects they would have kept their powder dry and not have brought so big a gun to the front. But that’s for the historians to worry about later.

In the present, the Fianna Fáil top brass can only lick yet another wound while knowing that a very big chunk of the fanbase will follow the flag and the republic, standing with Emmet and Wolfe Tone. The fact its someone else beneath the mast is of secondary importance.

While Fine Gael brings the fight to the Shinners, just like always. Fine Gael is the party that bedded the institutions of the state into the fabric of the country during the Dála of the first ten years of independence. As such, Fine Gael tend to defend those institutions with a religious zeal that Fianna Fáil have never been able to muster, despite their greater time in power. This Fine Gael zeal is especially interesting in this time of national crisis, when the institutions of the state have so clearly let us down.

The nasty sectarianism already evidenced in the campaign – that while Martin McGuinness is good enough for Nordies he is utterly out of the question for the good folk of the south – is perhaps another reflection of the reverence in which Fine Gael hold the institutions of the (southern) state. While they view the North as a failed state, Fine Gael hold the southern state to be just fine.

Well, it’s not. It’s really not. The evidence of the crash is that the institutions of the southern state have failed her people, and the fact that the new broom government are using a very old broom indeed for all their promises is something that can only fill the average citizen with despair.

Another reason why McGuinness is so attractive a candidate. The political establishment’s harping on about McGuinness’ past shows they are out of touch with the Irish present, where more and more people are beginning to realise that there may be more than one failed state on the island.

The First Ribbon-Cutter election isn’t that important in itself, but may be the beginning of a national conversation about who we are and who we want to be. The good and decent Unionists of the North were asked to put up with a lot for the sake of what they were assured was progress and a new tomorrow. For the people of the South to say that’s what’s good enough for the North isn’t good enough for the South suggests we have still to learn the lesson of history after all these bloody years. God help us.

Five Constituency Bets. Because We Might As Well Have the Craic

An Spailpín Fánach is enjoying Ivan Yates' constituency betting tips on Betfair almost as much as he's enjoying the statesmanship of our politicians, who surely put Periclean Athens in the ha'penny place.

Ivan is very much the insiders' insider, of course, while An Spailpín Fánach considers himself more of an outsiders' outsider, despite having never dispensed advice to the Minister for Finance in his kitchen, and being in the habit of putting his money where his (very big) mouth is.

Here, then, in ascending order of price, are An Spailpín's hugely unscientific bets to give you a bit of interest on Friday. Might be best to calibrate your stake according to price, by the way. No point in taking a complete bath. And these aren't necessarily endorsements, either, before someone takes the head off me. An Spailpín's dream of a United Federation of Planets, as outlined in Star Trek, burns brightly still.

Luke "Ming" Flanagan, Independent/New Vision. Roscommon-South Leitrim. 10/11.
Luke Flanagan is the nap of the meeting, for two reasons. Firstly, the electoral circumstances are made to order for a protest vote, and the electorate of Roscommon South-Leitrim will search long and hard to find a candidate less like those that have gone before than the Emperor.

Secondly, what people who have never met him may underestimate about Luke Flanagan is that the man is a consummate politican. He is supremely gifted in the political arts and, to borrow a favourite phrase of my father, if you burned Ming for a fool you'd have wise ashes. How else could he poster all of his constituency? War Rocket Ajax has been dispatched. Deal with it.

Maria Corrigan, Fianna Fáil. Dublin South. 10/11.
Media darling Senator Shane Ross is favourite to get the fifth seat here, but An Spailpín has heard that resentment towards George Lee still festers among the leafy suburbs. This will hurt Fine Gael's chances for a third seat, Alan Shatter and Olivia Mitchell being shoe-ins, but it will also hurt Senator Ross, who is nothing if not George Lee lite. The Fianna Fáil vote has to go somewhere, and Senator Corrigan is a reasonable bet for enough of it to remain in house to wash her ashore in fifth place. There are very few sisters running in the election, and that might stand to her in this particular constituency too.

Therese Ruane, Sinn Féin. Mayo. 2/1.
An Spailpín is a long time in exile from that earthly paradise that is the County Mayo, but my God, four Fine Gael seats out of five is a lot to ask. It would require vote management of the highest calibre for even the Free Beer Party to win four seats in an Irish five-seater, and it's doubly difficult in a constituency with as much ground to cover as Mayo.

The fifth seat will be down to transfers, which are a lottery, plain and simple. Getting 80% of the transfers on the ninth count is no good if you've been eliminated on the eighth. Again, as with Dublin South, the FF vote has to go somewhere and Sinn Féin is the natural destination for a disillusioned Fianna Fáil voter in the West. The two candidate strategy is risky, as it's assuming that policy will be more important than geography when either Ms Ruane or Ms Conway-Walsh is eliminated, thus arguing against a two candidate strategy in the first place, but how and ever. Ms Ruane will get more votes outside Castlebar than Mr Kilcoyne, the independent, and she gets the shilling on that basis.

John Gormley, Green Party. Dublin South-East. 3/1.
Ivan Yates assures us it'll be two Fine Gael, two Labour in Dublin South-East, but An Spailpín Fánach cannot get it out of his head that John Gormley's defence of his patch against the curly black smoke of that nasty incinerator won't stand to him.

It was hard not to pity Gormley on the Frontline leaders' debate last Monday. He seemed the most rational and thoughful of the five of them, but he's like one of those Japanese soldiers on a pacific island who fought on forty years after the Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima. He's worth a punt at threes, God love him.

Gerry Kilrane, Fianna Fáil. Roscommon-South Leitrim. 10/1.
This is the longshot punt of the card, but my goodness, could it really be true that county Leitrim could be without a TD for two consecutive Dála? An Spailpín can't come to terms with that, irrespective of party. Ivan didn't even mention Gerry Kilrane's name in his review of Roscommon-South Leitrim, and seems to believe that Martin Kenny is the only Leitrim candidate on the slate.

An Spailpín believes that Gerry Kilrane, despite the Fianna Fáil downturn, is more voter-friendly than Martin Kenny in Roscommon and can bubble up to the third seat on Kenny and Connaughton tranfers. It's a longshot, but that's why you get tens. You get nothin' for nothin' in this mean old world.

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The West Wing - Irish Style