Due Process, and the Dogs in the Street

Whenever someone in authority in Ireland is under pressure for perceived wrong-doing, it is the done thing for whatever flack has been sent to RTÉ to defend him or her to insist that he or she is “entitled to due process, just like any other citizen.”

Where Aughrim is lost in so many of these things is that the interviewer invariably accepts this notion. But the interviewer should not. The interviewer should instruct the flack to hold it right there, and tell the flack that the creature in question isn’t entitled to “due process, like any other citizen,” because the creature in question isn’t any other citizen.

If the creature in question were any other citizen, we wouldn’t be talking about him or her on Morning Ireland or the Six-One News or whatever. We wouldn’t give a fiddle-dee-dee what was done, by who, to whom. It would be the very least of our concerns.

The reason we’re interested in the actions of public figures is because those public figures have a considerable impact on the life and well-being of the community as a whole, and because of this, public figures must be held to a higher account than private citizens. It’s a necessary stop against corruption, jobbery, cronyism and many other evils, and God knows such a notion never caught on around here at all, at all.

Reader, have you heard that “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion?” It’s a two-thousand-year-old phrase that sums up the Romans’ attitude to people in public life. That not only must they themselves be models of probity, but those around them must be as well.

Contrast, this, then, with standards in Irish public life. For the past week, the media have been in a tailspin trying to chart who said what, to whom, and when, in regard to Garda whistleblowers and to what extent can we pin them on this. Because it’s only when pinned down that an Irish public figure will put his or her hands up and admit it’s a fair cop. Otherwise, the tradition is to say nothin’ and tough it out.

Those sagacious observers, the dogs in the street, couldn’t give an empty tin of Pedigree Chum who said what, to whom, and when. The doggies are convinced of the following facts:

• Maurice McCabe was ballaragged scandalously, and he was not, is not, nor will he be alone in that.
• The ballaragging didn’t happen by accident either. It’s not what you’d call an Act of God, like.
• The doggies don’t care how much the Garda Commissioner knew or didn’t know about it.
• The Mutt-ocracy do care that the current Garda Commissioner was brought in because of the scandal surrounding her predecessor and, rather than cleaning that up, she’s made it worse. Therefore, these debates about her stepping aside are pointless. She’s got to go. If she won’t resign, fire her and put someone else in charge, and keep firing people and appointing new ones until the screw-ups bloody stop.
• Katherine Zappone made a career from talking about children’s rights. How ironic, then, after a children’s referendum and the setting-up of a Ministry for Children, that the only thing Tusla seem to have done is played a part in a scandalous smear campaign. Goodbye, Katherine. Thanks for nothing.
• Frances Fitzgerald. What are you for, exactly, Frances? You’re for the door, that’s one thing we can settle straight away.
• Enoch Powell, that Wolverhampton wanderer and former UUP MP for South Down, once remarked that all political lives end in failure. Penny for your thoughts, Taoiseach.

As for an election not solving anything, whatever about the doggies, your correspondent is willing to give it a try, just in case it does solve something. Maybe, after the clown cabinet of the past year and the horror-show currently unfolding in the United States, the parties might be in a mood to behave in a vaguely grown-up fashion this time and present their plans like adults speaking to adults, rather than the usual rhetoric of orderlies in a mental home telling those fellows who think they’re Martians that the flying saucer will be here tomorrow to take them all back home.

As for our, the electorate’s, part, let’s all try to stop believing in flying saucers and get real while there’s still a country left to save.

Government or Circus?

The yawning gap that exists in Ireland between the process of electing a government and what a government is expected to do was illustrated in an almost offhand exchange about the Independent Alliance on the Irish Times’s Inside Politics podcast of last Friday night. The exchange is between Fiach Kelly and Pat Leahy of the Times’s political staff, and begins at 12:25 on the podcast:

FIACH KELLY
Sarah’s right. They are not used to government. They are used to saying ‘get up the yard, get off the fence, let’s put our shoulders to the wheel’ - 

PAT LEAHY
They’re the opposite of government. It’s not just that they’ve been a conventional opposition, but it’s the exact opposite. They’ve never been the sort of opposition that had to prepare, that had to watch what they said because they envisaged being in government after the next election.

FIACH KELLY
They had their ‘Charter for Change,’ which formed the basis of their negotiations over the past number of weeks. This document they drew up about a year ago about their principles – motherhood and apple pie is a generous description of said document. I was speaking to someone in Fine Gael today who said that last week was the worst week of their lives because, at least when they were dealing with Fianna Fáil they were professional operators, they knew how to negotiate. Then you turn around and talk to the Independents and they didn’t know how the system or the government or anything like that worked, at all. So it’s going to be a very steep learning curve for them.

And the question your broken-hearted correspondent asks of all this is: why don’t the media report this? Where are the articles and think pieces that say politics is a profession, like any other, and while getting elected is a key skill, being able to govern is another?

A national politician who is serious about national politics should know how the instruments of government work. He or she may disagree with how those instruments work, and that’s fine. When he or she is in power, he or she will then have the power to make those instruments better. But he or she must know what those instruments of government are in the first place. And it’s quite clear that members of the Independent Alliance haven’t a bull’s notion.

There is a chicken-and-egg situation here. Media claim that they don’t cover these issues because politicians don’t talk about them. Politicians claim they don’t talk about these issues because the people aren’t interested in them. But how can the people learn about them if not through the media?

Yesterday the Sunday Business Post led with a story about an ‘understanding’ between disgraced TD Michael Lowry and Fine Gael in return for Lowry’s support for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. As remarked upon here earlier, Lowry is like the dog that didn’t bark in the old Sherlock Holmes story.

Why would Michael Lowry support the government? What’s in it for him? The people of Tipperary elected Lowry on the first count in the election because he is seen to “deliver” for the people of Tipperary. What’s Lowry swung for the Premier this time? Why haven’t we been told? Why hasn’t any other media outlet (especially RTÉ) reported the story? Why hasn’t anyone asked the Nemesis of Cronyism, the Minister for Transport, Shane Ross TD, how he feels about a secret sweetheart deal with Michael Lowry?

This tweet from Matt Cooper may help explain why:

Very clever and witty insider column from Shane Ross in Sindo. Hope he continues in this vein every week he is a minister. Transparency.

— Matt Cooper (@cooper_m) May 8, 2016

Extraordinary. A story broke in the US last week about how ridiculously easy a member of the Obama administration found seeding stories in the media. That man wouldn’t ever have to get out of bed in Ireland.

But we have a government now, and they are sitting down to govern. How will they do that? Well, some of those governmental decisions that effect people’s lives and, potentially, the future of the state itself will be decided by a man who won a coin toss. Not because the Taoiseach has had his eye on this or that person’s career and thinks he or she could do a really good job as a junior minister in a particular department. No. It’s because he won a coin toss.

Imagine if, God forbid, you are in court, accused of murder. And instead of a judge, Bozo the Clown walks in and announces that, as a result of a coin toss, he’ll be running the court while Mr Justice Murphy will be doing pratfalls and standing on rakes in Fossett’s Circus for the foreseeable future. Then, with Bozo tooting a horn rather than banging a gavel, the court comes to order and the trial for your life begins.

Welcome to Ireland in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. God help us all.

A Second Election is the Only Sensible Solution

Enda Kenny must do the sensible thing. He must go up to the Park and tell the President it’s time to give the wheel another spin.

The strong media consensus that a Grand Coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael was not only the only possible result from the election but that it was the only sensible result from the election has proved to be so much blather.

It would take a seismic change to overturn a political culture that has lasted for nearly eighty years. As it happens, that seismic change happened five years ago, but instead of a radical realignment of Irish politics, we got a return to the Fine Gael / Labour coalitions of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were just as ideologically similar then as now, and they certainly had numbers to form a coalition, but nobody was talking about an FF/FG coalition being either inevitable or obvious then.

Five years on, we have stalemate, as the difference between how elections are run in this country and how governments are formed are clearer than they ever have been. In theory, the voter goes to the polls with the intention of selecting a government for the country. In practice, the voter goes to forty different polls and votes for the candidate that will best represent his or her local area when it’s time for goodies to be handed out.

Hence the impasse. In the past, the dominance of the major parties has been such that the flaw inherent in the system was never exposed. Fine Gael’s loss of a TD for not building a school in Ballycarrick was made up by the gain of a TD who was passionate on the retention of the garda station in Carrigbally. Checks and balances.

Unfortunately, the slow dissolution of the two-and-a-half party system has not been matched by a likewise evolution of political awareness in the electorate. This is partly a western thing; it doesn’t seem that the US electorate are having a particularly statesmanlike moment right now either, while the Tories in the United Kingdom are pointing a gun to their own heads while threatening to shoot the hostage. Extraordinary behaviour.

But the Irish context seems worse, somehow. Not least because the country is so small, and it shouldn’t be so hard to communicate what’s actually happening. For a small country to be independent, the citizens must be more active than they have to be in the big country like the UK or Germany or the USA. In big countries, there will always be enough clever and/or informed people to keep the political show on the road. Here, we need more hands to the mast.

A second election, then, but an election like no other. This second election, if it comes soon, will be the first honest election in God only knows how long. It will be an honest election because the electorate will be eager to know just why it’s going through this all again, and this will involve asking hard questions of the politicians.

Elections are understood to be about what different parties will do if given the chance to govern. This election has been unusual in electing a substantial number of TDs who are not trying a jot to govern, or who cannot muster support because they are independents. It will be interesting see them answer the question of why anyone should vote for them next time out.

For that reason, the Taoiseach should accept that, while the people have spoken, what they’ve said is unintelligible. Therefore, they must be asked again. Enda Kenny bottled a chance at remarking the politics of the country after the 2011 election by coalescing with Labour, rather than forcing Fianna Fáil to support their own policies. It is that choice that allowed Fianna Fáil to rise again so spectacularly.

But now Enda Kenny has that rarest of things in life: a second chance. By calling a second chance he can expose the limits of clientelist system and bring the voting public to a new understanding of politics and what good governance can actually do. The people will see that they must vote for a government, rather than a county councillor with super powers.

For what it’s worth, your correspondent doesn’t expect that happen. Some sort of government will be cobbled together that will pass a budget (Berlin permitting), and then collapse in 2017, leading to the election then. But things will have moved on by then, and the moment will have passed. New politics is difficult for old politicians, after all.

And yet that hope still glimmers. Enda Kenny has a very rare chance to really make history. I hope he takes it while it’s there.

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.

32 Things - Insider Gossip v Public Service Journalism

RTÉ are currently running an online series called 32 Things Paddy Wants to Know about the upcoming general election. This series is a precise illustration of the failure of Irish political journalism to inform the electorate about how the country is run.

The first of the 32 things Paddy wants to know is who’ll get elected in Cork South Central. This isn’t politics. This is gossip. Personalities are trivial. Policies are important.

The second of the 32 things is who’ll get elected in Tipperary. Again, gossip.

The third and fourth of the 32 things are how Labour and Renua will get on. This is a who’ll bigger, the Beatles or the Stones?-type story. Gossip.

The fifth of the 32 things is how women candidates will get on. It's an ideological topic, but there's no real substance there. The quotas have given the argument a false perspective, so you end up with a cat-fight report from Dún Laoghaire Fianna Fáil. Gossip.

Sixth and seventh are how Fine Gael and Sinn Féin will get on. See third and fourth.

The eighth is who’ll get the chop when Mayo reduces from five seats to four. Gossip, gossip, gossip.

That’s not public service journalism. That’s water-cooler conversation in the Dublin 2 Beltway. Fascinating for Insiders, not worth two balls of roasted snow to Joe or Jane Citizen. Here’s what Paddy and Patricia really want to know.

1. At the time of the crash, we were told that Ireland was sold into bondage for the next thirty years. Now the economy is growing at six per cent per annum. So – what happened to the projected 30 years of living off hot gravel? Has an economic miracle occurred? Or has nobody really known what was going on since August 2008 they’ve spent the past seven years bluffing for their lives and thanking God and Frau Merkel?
2. Six per cent growth per annum. Two per cent is ideal, isn’t it? Two point something, maybe? If the economy is growing at six per cent, doesn’t that mean it’s overheating? If it’s overheating, shouldn’t the government be trying to cool it down, rather than heat it up some more?
3. Or has the government embraced Charlie McCreevy’s belief that if you have it you should spend it?
4. Doesn’t that run against the advice of JM Keynes, who had the idea of a salting away the silver for a rainy day as a bedrock of his macro-economic policy? Weren’t we hearing about Keynes all during the crash?
5. Or when they hear “Keynes,” are Roy and Robbie the only men that come to the government’s mind?
6. I see those lads who terrorized that family in Tipperary had seventy previous convictions between them. How many previous convictions do you need until the Guards start to think you might be worth keeping an eye on?
7. If you run up twelve points on your driver’s license you’re taken off the road. How can you have multiple previous convictions and still be running around?
8. A guy with eleven previous convictions, for public order, robbery and assault, got a suspended sentence for beating the head off a girl on a bus recently. He was also recommended to do a course in anger management issues. Any idea where a citizen could do an anger management course after reading that court report?
9. Speaking of our learned friends, does anyone remember that cutting legal fees was something the Troika stressed over and over again during the time here? How’s that coming along?
10. Any plans to set up an Irish-Water-esque quango to get that show in the road?
11. Yeah. Poor example, I know, I know.
12. Remember when Enda promised a quango cull?
13. Or the report card for Ministers?
14. Whose report card are you looking forward to the most?
15. Alan “AK-47” Kelly?
16. Phil “Big Phil” Hogan?
17. Doctor James “Bottler” Reilly?
18. Heather “A Rebel I came, I’m still the same” Humphries?
19. Jan O’Sullivan, who’s so helpless she doesn’t even have a nickname?
20. Alan Shatter, who had the poor Attorney General plagued ringing her at all hours of the day and the night about the nicer points of torts, malfeasances and likewise legalease?
21. He might even have asked her about fees now and again, of course. Just to break the tension and have a laugh, like.
22. Speaking of reports, how long it’s been since Moriarty Tribunal Report came out?
23. Four years? Four-and-a-half?
24. And that’s resulted in – what, exactly?
25. And Labour are all fine with that, I suppose? Them oul’ ethics aren’t bothering them? Martyrs for the ethics, Labour. Labour used to be worse bothered with the ethics than great-aunt Maggie with the lumbago. The ethics must have cleared up after Labour got into government. Poor Maggie is still crippled, of course. 
26. And how are things looking in the North? Not too great?
27. After all these years, wouldn’t it be something if Ireland were to be finally united by politicians on both sides realising that there are enough cookies in the cookie-jar for all the boys, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter?
28. And are we all sure there’ll be enough room in Longford for all those Syrians along with everyone else?
29. No Minister, I couldn’t name three streets in Longford either. Although I suppose Pearse and O’Connell are always good guesses.
30. Did you see where the Phoenix reckoned the next Presidential election will be between Michael D, Miriam O’Callaghan and Enda? The Lord save us.
31. Come here, Do you still have that brother beyond in Cricklewood Broadway?
32. Do you think he could put me up for a week or two until I find a job and a place to stay? I’ve had my fill of this nightmare country.

Owning the News Cycle

Yesterday’s news was dominated by stories about patients on trolleys in Irish hospitals. Why?

Nobody doubts that having patients on trolleys is a bad thing. But that doesn’t make patients-on-trolleys news. For instance, the famed NHS of Great Britain has an A&E overcrowding problem right now and, bad and all as the HSE are, they aren’t responsible for events in Britain.

When asked once about the scandal of patients on trolleys, a medical doctor and Minister for Health once remarked that there is, actually, very little difference between a hospital bed and a hospital trolley, per se. You can lie on both, they both have wheels, and so on. But that doctor and Minister wasn’t Leo Varadkar, the current incumbent at Hawkins House. That was John O’Connell, twenty years ago.

So. Patients on trolleys because of hospital over-crowding isn’t unique to Ireland or unique to this year. Our current over-crowding is mirrored by over-crowding in the British NHS, and the issue of patients on trolleys has been an issue in Irish politics for a quarter of a century.

Why, then, did it get such intensive coverage yesterday?

Sometimes, something makes the news because there’s nothing else going on. It’s like all the foreign news that leads the bulletins over Christmas. An election in Azerbaijan is below the page 2 fold in the Irish Times 51 weeks of the year. Christmas week, hold the front page for the word from Baku.

But that isn’t the case this week, where there are lots of other things happening. Your correspondent's own favourite was Aodhán Ó Ríordáin’s extraordinary attack on his fellow Government members as reported in yesterday's Examiner. Ó Ríordáin went on the record to say none of the Government’s mistakes have been Labour’s fault. That buck, thinks Ó Ríordáin, rests with Fine Gael.

You can imagine what the backbenchers in Fine Gael, already plenty jittery, made of them onions. You can equally imagine what sort of repercussions that might have on those same backbenchers' enthusiasm, watery to begin with, for the same-sex marriage referendum – a same-sex marriage referendum for which Ó Ríordáin himself is to lead the Yes side for the Government. Will the backbench Blueshirts forgive and forget? What do you think?

That’s a juicy story. Was it covered by the National Broadcaster? Nope. Not a sausage.

For the four days prior yesterday, Lucinda Creighton's was the only story in town. Fergus Finlay in the Examiner was so sure that #rebootireland amounted to less-than-nothing that he wrote a column about it, as one does about things that aren’t important.

Of course, it hasn’t been easy to figure out just what Lucinda is up to, other than to note that when it comes to media appearances the woman is as sure-footed as a tightrope walker. Your correspondent has long hoped that Creighton would be the leader to finally consign civil war politics to the history books (and, for civil war politics to end, both civil war parties have to go – an important point that is hardly ever mentioned), but unless people rally to her flag and soon, that chance is gone.

But while the chance of ending civil war politics will be gone, Ms Creighton herself will be anything but. Her time is only beginning. For instance, consider the following picture tweeted by Lucinda just before Christmas:

Isn’t it extraordinary? For those who aren’t good at dates, it was December 17th when Leo Varadkar told the Dáil that Ireland’s abortion laws were too restrictive. And then he goes off and has a lovely dinner with his old friend and former party colleague Lucinda Creighton on December 19th, that same L Creighton who happens to be the current face of the anti-abortion movement in Ireland.

So. On Christmas week the Twitterati learned that Lucinda Creighton isn’t such a bigot after all, and is more than willing to dine with those who oppose her beliefs. And they learned that Leo Varadkar isn’t a bigot either, and remains loyal to his old friend. We can gather from this that, were Enda Kenny no longer the leader of Fine Gael, there would be very few bars to Lucinda’s return to Fine Gael should she choose that path.

Then, the first week after Christmas, Lucinda flexed her muscles before the general public by dominating the media with a press conference at which she said the absolute bare minimum to make renting the room worthwhile. Four days’ publicity from an hour-long presser.

As they saw Lucinda at every hands’ turn over the weekend, did Fine Gael backbenchers wonder if it was their own seats that were most vulnerable to the rise of a Creightonista faction?

Not that anybody is talking about Lucinda now. Oh no. On Monday, we had Simon Coveney - a contender to replace Enda Kenny as Fine Gael leader with, funnily enough, Leo Varadkar - announce that the lucrative American market is now open to Irish beef for the first time in fourteen weeks. Then yesterday the trolley scandal broke – just when Leo Varadkar happened to be on holidays and unable to act to defuse the situation.

Man. How unlucky is that for Leo?

Some commentators have said that it’s difficult to see what exactly Lucinda is up to with all this media activity. Reader, there’s a lot of it about.

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.

Lucinda

First published in the Western People on Monday.

Irish politics is like an iceberg. Only a small amount is visible at any one time, while there is a great mass of it that’s hidden, away from prying eyes.

This was especially obvious this Christmas, as the TDs and Senators luxuriate in a break that lasts for another ten days or so. But while they continue to relax, at home or abroad, the more thoughtful members of the Oireachtas will be wondering: what is Lucinda Creighton going to do next, and how dearly might I myself pay for it?

As discussed in this place earlier, Lucinda Creighton has it in her power to finally close the book on the civil war, and lead Ireland into the second century of independence (such as it is). So far, she has not put a foot wrong and, while the theoretically-retired Gay Byrne has been on television more often than Creighton, her influence is everywhere.

Creighton outsmarted Sinn Féin in backing a winner during the Seanad Referendum, and now she’s released another cat among the pigeons when the news broke over the holidays that the Reform Alliance has registered as a political party with the Standards in Public Office Commission.

What does this mean? It means as much as you want it to be mean, really. Registering with the Standards in Public Office Commission means that the Reform Alliance can fundraise. That in itself doesn’t necessarily mean the party will fundraise. The act of registration is just another chess piece, sliding along the board. It may mean nothing, or everything. We’ll have to wait and see.

The second interesting thing that came to light over the holidays is that if the party is formed, it will not be formed until September. And that delay leads to three more fascinating points of interest.

Firstly, the delay allows Lucinda Creighton herself to have her baby (announced in November) before she returns to the front lines. There had been speculation that Michael McDowell or Shane Ross were potential leaders of the Reform Alliance, but this does not stand up to scrutiny.

McDowell failed as leader of the PDs, and there is no evidence to believe that the sovereign people would follow Shane Ross in the queue at Tesco’s if they could avoid it. If there is no Lucinda Creighton, there will be no Reform Alliance. Right now, Creighton is Irish politics’ Joan of Arc, for good or ill.

Secondly, if the party isn’t to be launched until September, that means the Creightonites are avoiding the local elections entirely. Conventional wisdom is that you need boots on the ground for general elections – that your candidates must have served their time in local councils before moving on to the Premier League of the Teachtaí Dhála.

But of course, if the word “reform” in the party title is to mean anything, then it makes sense to avoid the local elections. Maybe reform means no longer presuming that the Dáil is just a king-size county-council, and that a TD is an equally king-sized county councillor. Maybe that’s not what you want in a legislator.

There is a risk in this strategy. If one particular party does particularly well during the locals, the momentum is then with that party, and taken from the Creightonites, but little in this life is guaranteed. It’s a risk worth taking, and besides the corollary – no clear momentum behind anyone, low turnout, oddball results – makes a further case for the Reform Alliance.

But the third interesting thing about leaving the formation of the Reform Alliance for nine months is that the delay gives nine months’ breathing room to mend fences between Fine Gael and the Creightonites before all is lost. And that possibility isn’t to be ruled out at all.

Have Fine Gael learned the lesson of history? Fine Gael has traditionally been the alternative party of government since 1932. When the PDs were formed in the 1980s, they took a slice off Fianna Fáil, specially FF’s long-cherished core value of never going into coalition, but the PDs did severe damage to Fine Gael.

No Fine Gael leader led his party to general election victory during the life of the PDs, not least as middle class votes that used to go to Fine Gael went to the PDs instead. Do Fine Gael want to risk that happening again? Is it better to have Lucinda Creighton inside the tent?

Fine Gael will think about that very seriously in the run-up to the local and European elections in the summer. Enda Kenny has been a phenomenal success as Taoiseach, and has grown into the role. But politics is not a sentimental game and Fine Gael will make a cold and hard assessment based on potential, rather than achievement. Gratitude is poor currency in politics.

If the local and European elections go well for Fine Gael, Creightonism will be over. Enda will be unassailable, it will be all the one to Fine Gael if Lucinda Creighton forms a new party or a rock band, and Creighton’s time will have passed. But if the elections go badly for Fine Gael, the potential for a Creighton reconciliation will be there, as the lesser of two potential evils.

It will depend where the power lies. There will be a faction who want Kenny gone and their own candidate in as leader. There will be another faction who are aware that Creighton’s return may make her heir-in-waiting to new leader, and that new leader will not relish the thought of always having to watch his or her back.

And these are just the macro-factors that anybody can figure out when you sit down and think about it. Politics, as the former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, are entirely dictated by events. Who knows what story will break between now and September that will turn over the entire board, and have everyone start again? NAMA? The public sector? A constitutional crisis? Who knows?

Whatever happens, it’s an interesting time to study Irish politics. It would be tremendous fun if only the future of the country weren’t at stake.

Enda, Lucinda, and the Future of the Country

First published in the Western People on Monday.

It’s not often that the two most important politicians in the country are from County Mayo. Not only is that the case currently, but both Lucinda Creighton and Enda Kenny have it in their power to change the politics of the country forever, if they should so choose.

Enda Kenny is already a winner in this regard. The underestimated man has proven himself a leader of courage in a time of crisis in the country, and this can never be taken away from him. He has certainly blundered here and there along the way but the man who makes no mistakes is the man who does nothing at all. If Kenny were to resign in the morning history would view his Premiership favourably.

Enda Kenny is the man who brought stability back to the economy and, in a time of deep national unease, the man’s fundamental optimism and good humour were badly needed. He is getting a hard time currently over the Seanad referendum, which certainly was a blunder, but the Seanad will not be an issue on the doorsteps come either next year’s local and European elections or the general election that will decide who governs on the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. You can safely bet the children’s allowance on that.

Lucinda Creighton may dispute that assessment of Kenny. It’s become quite clear over the years that the one party couldn’t hold two such contrasting personalities. Creighton left – or was pushed – from Fine Gael over her stance on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, but it could be that a row was always going to flare up and this Bill just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Life throws these things at us.

But now that she’s on the outside against her will, what does Creighton see as her options? The cleverest thing to do would have been to take her beating, and then be re-admitted to the party in time for the next general election. The Kenny faction may not like her, but there are plenty in Fine Gael who do. Equally, there is a population who, whatever their views on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill itself, admire Creighton’s courage in standing against the tide, and the woman’s considerable intellect. If she did her porridge, as it were, Fine Gael would have found a way back for her.

Instead, Creighton has been making waves. Where she could have sat out the battle and knitted on the backbenches, she has instead formed the Reform Alliance from among the other TDs who were ejected with her, and Denis Naughten, who lost the Fine Gael whip earlier over Roscommon Hospital. And what the Reform Alliance will do next is the pivot on which the history of this country will turn.

It all depends on whether or not Enda Kenny is still leader of Fine Gael come the next general election. He was seen as a sure thing, but his enemies – who never went away – will have been given fresh heart by the Seanad fiasco. Richard Bruton is certainly finished as an alternative leader, but there are plenty others willing to step up. Under a new regime, would Creighton and the Reform Alliance be welcomed back to Fine Gael’s bosom? Of course they would, if for no other reason to have them where the new leader can see them.

But what will the Reform Alliance do while Kenny is still the boss? The very formation of the Reform Alliance was a surprise. The Reform Alliance’s intervention in the Seanad Referendum, though almost certainly of no impact to the result, was a positive shock. The Reform Alliance was testing its muscle, to see how much they could press off the bench. And that then begs the question of how much muscle will they have built up when or if a return to Fine Gael becomes a prospect?

This is the big question in Irish politics now. The country is no longer in crisis, but it is a long way from being back on its feet. The turnout of the Seanad referendum and the repeated opinion polls that show such strong support for independents mean that there is a considerable amount of the population that no longer feels it has a voice in national politics. The space for a new party is clearly there.

There are three things that generally stand against the prospect of a new party. The first is opportunity, as Irish politics is conservative and loathe to change. The upheaval caused by the crash changes this for as long as the trauma lasts.

The second problem is finance, but a right-wing party will always attract more money than a left-wing one – who would finance a party that, once it gets into power, will only take even more money off you in taxes? It makes no sense.

The final point, then, is leadership. For a new party to exist, it needs a strong and charismatic leadership. Creighton has that gift. She could have wormed her way out of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, as others in Fine Gael did, but she stood her ground and suffered considerable consequences to her career. In a political system often accused of careerism and nothing else, she displayed integrity and courage. A lot of people still don’t agree with Creighton’s stance, but a considerable number of those cannot help but admire the woman’s courage.

If things fell their way, the Reform Alliance could win enough seats in the general election to be kingmaker in the next Dáil. By holding the balance of power, the Reform Alliance could make real and substantial reform the price of that king-making. In so doing, they could end civil war politics in Ireland, and do so at the symbolically important point in time of the 100th anniversary of the Rising. Ireland would stop being a teenager and accept adult responsibilities.

That’s the choice facing Lucinda Creighton from Claremorris in the coming months and years. Wait for an opportunity to return to Fine Gael, or take her chance at changing Irish politics forever. May God guide her in whatever decision she chooses to make.

Jobs, Work and Culture

First published in the Western People on Tuesday.

Everything that the Government announced last week about their long-term jobs initiative is to be welcomed. Why should it not be? It’s been a summer of political strife over the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill and battle will be re-joined over the Seanad Abolition Amendment come the Autumn.

All the while, 422,000 people endure the misery and humiliation of queuing up for their few shillings’ dole. For the 177,000 who are classified as long-term unemployed, it must feel like the state has given up on them.

Therefore, anything that’s done to help the unemployed get off the Register is worthwhile. While politicians try to score points in the Dáil, actual people in the dole queues wish to God those same politicians would just shut up and point them to where the jobs are, so they can return to life and normality.

The most impressive detail of the Government’s jobs initiative is the idea of a tapered return to work, something broadcaster and parliamentary assistant Noel D Walsh has often mentioned in different media appearances. If you’re living a hand-to-mouth existence on dole and its combined benefits, the one month that you have to survive until your first paycheck arrives can be a very long month indeed.

Rainy day savings may have run out long ago, and it might not be possible to make ends meet between the end of benefits and the start of wage-earning. This is the reality of life on the dole when your money runs out. You can do nothing. The money is too small. There is no wriggle room.

As such, any provision that the benefits can be extended and then paid back, or tapered off gradually, is to be applauded. The Government can’t stand on ceremony about these things. They are correct to go with whatever works, and this provision is overdue if anything.

On the macro level though, all initiatives are just bailing water on a sinking ship unless broader questions of culture are addressed. You’ll have plugged one leak when another springs up – better to ask why the ship is sinking in the first place.

There are two problems culturally. The first is our post-colonial heritage, where the folk memory of the Irish hasn’t made the connection that cheating on taxes and defrauding social welfare isn’t sticking one to the eight-hundred-year oppressor, but souring our own sovereign Irish milk. For a small nation to survive, we need to show greater solidarity with each other, and support the system.

The nation will have matured when the fella in the pub boasting about foxing the welfare or the taxman gets pints poured on top of him instead of bought for him. We’re a while from that, but we have to get there. The sums just won’t add up otherwise.

The second cultural problem is one that a lot of people reading this paper won’t be familiar with. Most people in Mayo either grew up on a farm or else no great distance from one. And on the land, there’s no real way to hide from a day’s work. In urban Ireland, there are swathes of population where nobody has had a job in living memory.

Think about that for a second. Suppose you’re going to school in a deprived area. Your father is on the dole, as are all your aunts and uncles. So is everyone on your street, and so are the vast majority of the parents of everyone else at school. What earthly motivation is there for you to get a job when you leave school? What do you even know about working in the first place, when you’ve never seen it done? When it’s never been part of your life?

When it comes to urban decay, the underlying tone in commentary is that these people are dumb, that they need state support because they cannot help themselves. They are not dumb. They are simply living in a different world to you or I, with different stimuli and different reactions.

Tennyson’s Lotus Eaters sing that “slumber is more sweet than toil,” and they’re right. Why would you work when everything around you encourages you to stay in bed? If you’ve never had a job, what do you know of the dignity of work, or the satisfaction of a job well done?

What do you do to change that culture? What do you do to make that section of society give up a good thing for what our modern contemporary culture decries as “wage slavery”? Their time is their own, and if things are bad a visit to the CWO can sort that out. Why would any sensible person give up on that?

Besides; no government can create jobs in the first place. Everybody who ever ran for office in any country promised jobs, but that’s shorthand. What they actually mean is that they hope to create an economic environment in which it will be easier for employers to employ more people. But economics gives everyone a pain in the head so politicians say “jobs!” and the thousands cheer.

For people who were working and have hit the skids the Government’s jobs initiative is a godsend. It means they haven’t been forgotten, the system acknowledges their plight and will make it as easy as possible for them to get back to work if the job is there. For that other section of the long-term unemployed, it doesn’t matter a whit. They might not even know an announcement was made.

Taoisigh come and go, economies go boom and go bust, and still their cycle of life goes on, oblivious to all. And it’s wrong – it’s wrong that society is striated, that your destiny is decided by accident of birth, that not all children have equal opportunity. The Government’s job initiative is to be welcomed and has many fine points, but the problem of the generationally long-term unemployed will prove a tougher nut to crack.

Government Honeymoon - Keeled Out and Gasping on a Hospital Trolley Somewhere in Rural Ireland

Charlie Flanagan, Fine Gael TD for Laois-Offaly, sent this tweet at 8:15 last night: “I can’t accept Labour proposals for Portlaoise hospital. No discussions with staff or trade unions. Not govt policy. Policy on the hoof!”

This could just be kite-flying or shape-throwing of course. But the last week has seen the government lose no small amount of lustre over Roscommon Hospital and if every government TD is going to go overboard over a parish pump issue like so many Jackie Healy-Raes then we’ll all be back in the polling booths within a year.

An Spailpín hasn’t received a review copy of Kevin Rafter’s book about how Enda Kenny became Taoiseach but there was an extract in the Sunday Times yesterday week. It talked about candidate selection and five point plans and the incandescent genius of Mark Mortell, but it did not mention Newstalk and neither did it mention the single most important event of the last campaign, the event that proved that Fine Gael could not be beaten.

Enda Kenny refused to appear on a party leader’s debate with Vincent Browne on TV3 and Fine Gael rose in the polls that weekend. The message was clear; nothing that happens in the next fortnight matters a damn. Fianna Fáil are going to get it good and there’s nothing that can happen to stop that.

The theory that Fine Gael had to fight off a Labour challenge is a bottle of smoke. The Labour challenge may have existed at dinner parties in Ranelagh and Sandymount but on the ground the candidates weren’t there. Rethreads of single issues campaigners or local ward bosses who just want to get elected irrespective of party or ideology – of whom Mae Sexton of Longford is surely the ne plus ultra – were never going to get elected.

But what really gave lie to the notion of competition between Labour and Fine Gael was how quickly Eamon Gilmore put coalition on the agenda, a year or eighteen months after insulting Enda Kenny on the Late Late Show, remarking that Kenny would make a good Taoiseach but a better Tanaiste. The grandees of the Labour Party – Gilmore, Rabbitte, Quinn, Burton – aren’t getting any younger and this was their last chance at power. Simple as that.

So what had been billed as the most pivotal election in Ireland since 1918 quickly became politics as usual. The financial crisis presented the country and Enda Kenny with a unique chance to change the political landscape forever, but Kenny didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see it and settled for more of the same.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost. The media have given Enda Kenny’s Premiership the softest ride in political history, through either a misguided attempt at wearing the green jersey (and any time you hear about this mythical green jersey you may safely bet someone is planning to hang you), guilt at their remarkable coverage of 21st Century Ireland or terror at losing their own jobs as the Irish media industry collapses even more quickly the construction industry.

No matter. Irish politics is stuck on a permanent loop. Enda Kenny, not content with having an election delivered him on a plate, went out and promised the devil and all for votes anyway.

In the coming months Kenny has to keep a lid on spending, keep the EU sweet and the indigenous Unions sweeter, and all the while reform the Irish political system from within, which is a bigger task than doing away with the Seanad or imposing gender quotas as a further block to talent. Oh, and the impeding train wreck that is the Gay Mitchell Presidential candidacy will have to be handled as well. After all that, the booing that Enda will get from the locals at the Connacht Final in Hyde Park might seems as an angels' choir in his memory. God help him, and his poor nation.

Dog Days Are Over - Enda Kenny Can't Be Caught

The cackling over the Fine Gael Valentine eMessage cards – appalling though they are – doesn’t matter. Broadband penetration is so poor in Ireland that two out of three people will never even see the damnable things. The reality is that the people have made up their minds. They want Fine Gael, and that’s that.

The hide Enda strategy was not as high risk as some people – your humble correspondent front and centre among their number – thought. If anything, it’s been genius and, after being hidden for so long, Enda may be about to come shining into the light this week. The Merkel trip today is the first step in that – a move that’s much more clever than it appears, because it broadens the scope of campaign and joins battle on a totally unexpected flank, as we shall see below.

An Spailpín doesn’t think Fianna Fáil face annihilation, but the weekend poll must have broken their hearts. There is a chance that the party will do better than expected, because of our inability as a people to properly understand who Fianna Fáil actually are – as discussed on this blog earlier this year – and because it’s possible that where Fianna Fáil used to get first and second seats in constituencies, they may now limp home in fourth or fifth place, for a variety of reasons.

A seat is still a seat, and Fianna Fáil will count their blessings while they may. The sea-change question will be decided at the next election, rather than this one. But as an option for Government, the people cannot forgive Fianna Fáil at this election.

If Fianna Fáil were to promise to turn the Hill of Tara into the Big Rock Candy Mountain itself, it would make no difference. The people want Fianna Fáil to do their penance and live off bread and water for a while.

The choice for the governance of the next Dáil, then, is Fine Gael or Labour. This now has less and less to do with minutiae of policy, but with broader strokes – pain now or pain later, private sector v public sector, and so on. Fine Gael have done their sums better and Labour are suddenly in danger of being outflanked by that huge collection of independents who are united by their difference.

There was general speculation in the press over weekend that Fianna Fáil and Labour will now form a bizarre alliance of convenience in a desperate effort to haul Fine Gael back to the pack, but while that would certainly make sense for Labour, who are now looking at power slipping from their grasp, it would not make sense for Fianna Fáil.

Even before he became leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin pledged to support the new government if they followed the broad outline of the Fianna Fáil four year plan. It would make no sense in that context to hobble Fine Gael with a Labour party who famously opposed the bank guarantee, as Joan Burton delights in reminding the nation.

Eamon Gilmore said yesterday that the people didn’t want a single party government, but he’s wrong. Strong leadership is exactly what went missing in 2008 and the nation have been crying out for. People don’t understand what’s going on, and that’s why the support for Fine Gael is strengthening now. People want certainly, and Fine Gael is the only party offering that certainty.

An Spailpín would prefer if Enda Kenny fought a different campaign and addressed the nation as a whole via the medium of television rather than in random bunches on the campaign stump, but it’s impossible to deny that the strategy is not only working a treat for them, but is surely going better than they could have hoped.

The nature of the electorate is such that any attacks on Enda Kenny’s competence are now likely to work out, in a remarkable and depressing irony, like the questioning of Bertie Ahern in the last election – personal attacks rather than legitimate inquiries on a question of governance. The leading from the back campaign isn’t terribly good for politics but for Enda Kenny himself and his struggles to hold onto the Fine Gael leadership over the years, it’s sweet redemption.

Fine Gael can’t be caught. The only question is whether or not they will form a majority government, a minority government propped up by independents or coalesce with a deeply grateful Labour party. The Angela Merkel visit tomorrow may turn out to be a masterstroke to overshadow a debate that most people won’t watch anyway, because it's too short a format for five voices.

The German visit may prove a masterstroke because Angela Merkel is leader of the Christian Democrat party in Germany, which is a part of the European People’s Party in Brussels. Just like Fine Gael themselves.

Expect a big thumbs up for Enda from Angela tomorrow and Enda returns to Ireland having planted an Irish flag at the heart of Europe, and having cut yet another rod with which to beat Gilmore after his ill-judged remarks about "Frankfurt's way" on TV3 last week. It seems that while Enda wasn’t there himself, someone must have shown him a tape. Ouch!

Doing the Sums - Did the Tallaght Strategy Really Cost Fine Gael Votes?

Enda Kenny is quoted in Saturday’s Irish Times as saying that he is not in favour of a second Tallaght strategy – Alan Dukes’ decision to support the Charlie Haughey minority government of 1987 in its policy of fiscal rectitude – because Fine Gael “suffered at the polls as a consequence” of the first Tallaght strategy.

But is that true? Fine Gael had 50 seats on 27.1% of the vote after the 1987 election. In the 1989 election, Fine Gael won 55 seats on 29.3% of the vote.

So the electorate rewarded Fine Gael in the immediate aftermath of the Tallaght Strategy. The popular vote increased by 2.2% and the Fine Gael seat total increased by five. That’s a positive result.

Fine Gael got hammered in the next election after, 1992, when it lost ten seats and dropped to 24.5% of the popular vote, but they can’t really blame that on the Tallaght Strategy. Fine Gael threw Alan Dukes overboard after they lost the 1990 Presidential election to Mary Robinson and ditched his Tallaght Strategy along with him. John Bruton, Richard’s brother, was in charge by 1992.

Fine Gael got rid of a leader who gained them seats and votes in the 1989 general election for one who lost them seats and votes in the 1992 general election. That is Fine Gael’s Tallaght Strategy legacy. They didn’t know a good thing when they had it.

This is not the only time in this generation that Fine Gael have been unable to interpret their own electoral numbers. If anything, 2002 was the greater psephological disaster.

Michael Noonan endured eight years of odium for the 2002 election result until his recent rehabilitation in the party – and that only came about by accident too - but that interpretation has always been unfair on Noonan. The party’s percentage of the popular vote dropped to 22.5% under Noonan in 2002 but the fall of 5.4 percentage points from their 1997 total resulted in an utterly disproportionate loss of seats.

While Fine Gael only lost ten seats on a 4.8 percentage point drop in support in 1992, the year of the Spring tide, they lost 31, more than three times as many, for a 5.8 percentage point drop in 2002, even though there’s only one percentage point in the difference.

There is a reason for this. The Irish electoral system is unfair. It not nearly as proportional as it claims.

The multi-seat nature of the constituencies means that a small tremor in the popular vote can result in an earthquake when it works its way through the local rivalries and the cute-as-you-like vote sharing and constituency dividing that the nation considers so vital to our national politics.

The corollary of 2002 happened in 2007, when Enda Kenny’s increase of only 4.8 percentage points of the popular vote, from 22.5% to 27.3%, saw Fine Gael increase its seat total by 20, from 31 to 51, an increase in seats gained that was out of proportion to the increase in votes won.

The result of 2007 was just as disproportionate in terms of popular vote versus seats as 2002 had been, but Fine Gael chose to ignore it because it worked their way in 2007. They are paying the consequences of that decision now, as bumbling conspirators again dream of a bloodless decapitation.

But the greater error was Fine Gael’s jettisoning of the Tallaght Strategy twenty years ago. Because they did not suffer from the adoption of the Tallaght Strategy in the first place, Fine Gael gained no advantage in dumping it.

Had they continued, Fine Gael would now be able to claim twenty years of a high moral ground when the standing of politicians has never been lower. And they could have, because the evidence is there as outlined above.

For the main opposition party to be so very poor at doing their own sums or exercising self-knowledge does not bode well for the nation at a time of deep and dark crisis.

The Nature of Barry Murphy's Genius

Is Barry Murphy the funniest man Ireland has ever produced? Twelve years and four World Cups from their debut, Après Match continues to get better and better. Risteard Cooper and Gary Cooke are good players, but Barry Murphy is a great player, the shining light of them all that elevates the sketches from funny to inspired.

Murphy's greatest gift as a mimic is to find a trait in someone that nobody noticed before, expose it and have the nation realise that it's been there all along. If that's not genius, what is?

Dogs might have heard that tiny whine in Liam Brady's voice before but no human being did until Barry Murphy made it an integral part of Brady's Après Match character. Now you realise it's been there all the time, and informs that determined streak of curmudgeon that is so much a part of Brady as his being the best ever Irish player, a heart-on-his-sleeve patriot and an excellent TV analyst.

Murphy's Vincent Browne has been the revelation of this World Cup's Après Match, where Murphy captures Browne's particular brand of passive aggression. Browne's abrasiveness has been famous throughout his career - John Waters' memorably describes how difficult Browne was to work for in Jiving at the Crossroads - but again Murphy identifies that defining characteristic that's overlooked.

It's the fact that Browne, for all the bluster, is supremely indifferent to whatever anyone says to him. As far as Vincent is concerned, it's all a game that exists for his exasperated amusement. Browne is often angry, but never moved. He seems to consider most things beneath contempt, and holds everyone at arm's length, like Raymond Chandler's famous gardener sneering at a weed. Here's Barry/Vincent running the rule over Enda Kenny and Leo Varadkar. Superb.

Week of the Rubber Knives - Has Richard Bruton Destroyed Fine Gael?

An Spailpín Fánach, in one of his more dissolute days, was having a drink in a bar that was owned by a man who would later become a member of that supposedly soon to be endangered species, Seanad Éireann.

In the bar, I got talking to a local and the subject got on to fighting. My new friend, who was the worse for wear and had been for quite some years, advised your correspondent that, should ill-luck ever dictate I got involved in a fight, the first punch was vital. If I failed to do damage with the first punch, then damage would be done unto me. There ended the lesson.

Would that Richard Burton had been in that bar instead of An Spailpín Fánach. Bruton could have saved himself, his party and his country a whole lot of trouble by learning that the first shot has to be the kill shot.

Strange to say it now, but Fine Gael can count themselves lucky that this happened now as opposed to in the course of an election campaign. Richard Bruton has been touted as Fine Gael’s shining star for years by a not-terribly-discerning press but when his moment came he didn’t so much shoot himself in the foot as climb up onto the spout of the woodchipper and lower himself into the swirling blades, inch by bloody inch.

Richard Bruton has had years to plan his moment. The suspicion existed that he never moved against Enda Kenny because he really didn’t want to. It wasn’t in his make up. And the bizarre events of the past week bear that out because it is impossible to imagine how he could have planned it worse. Whatever possessed him, or whoever was whispering in his ear, he made the most incredible bags of it.

Telling the old boss that there’s a new boss in town in the final moment of a coup. The clever plotter has all his pawns in place long before then. Richard Burton, for reasons that can never be explained, seems to have only started counting heads when Enda Kenny, rather than going gently into that good night, cuffed tricky Dicky around the ears and sent him and his cohorts to bed without supper.

This week of the rubber knives saw Richard Bruton exposed, now and forever, as a bumbling political amateur. The commentariat may not care for the Mayo cadence of Enda Kenny’s accent, but the Father of the Dáil clearly learned a thing or two in a lifetime in politics. Bruton lost at every engagement. He was utterly out of his depth.

Irrespective of your own biases, this week has been bad for politics in Ireland. An opposition must exist for politics to exist and, however much people may fume at Fianna Fáil perfidy, the lesson of the past two elections is that the sovereign people chose the devil they knew. Richard Bruton, and whatever plotters put him up to it, couldn’t win an election in his own party, and didn’t even seem too bothered about going out canvassing for votes in time for his heave. What chance had he of winning a national election?

As for Enda, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. He is well rid of an all-mouth-and-no-trousers brigade but Fine Gael’s fundamental problems remain. Fine Gael exist as a party that is defined by who they are not rather than who they are. They don’t stand for anything.

The Bruton heave was all about personality, and nothing about policy or how the differences between how the two men would save the country. And that is the emptiest feeling of all when the hilarity of this week has died down. The nation may not like Fianna Fáil, but at least the Soldiers of Destiny know what they’re doing.