Author Archives: Derek Mooney

From top: Taoiseach Micheal Martin at government buildings; Derek Mooney

You can tell that it wasn’t a great week for the current government, when one of the least worst headlines it garnered was: Taoiseach defends Eamon Ryan’s appointment of cronies to climate council roles.

It’s like Zapponegate never happened… or maybe it’s that this administration spends so much time lurching from problem to problem that it hasn’t yet had a chance to learn the lessons of the last one?

Let’s look back over the stories that dominated the headlines during just the first few days of last week.

On Tuesday, we discovered that it would be 2042 before we would see a Dart underground line. We also found that that there won’t be new metro lines south or west of Dublin with the next two decades either. All this courtesy of a National Transport Authority review of its strategy for the capital.

This was the same day that we learned that the Department of Finance was considering going after the home purchase deposits coming via the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’. (It took Pascal Donohoe several days to walk this story back.)

A few hours later we read that the ‘unprecedented’ shortage of homes meant that rent inflation was now hitting 6.8%, notwithstanding the rent caps and rent pressure zones.

As if all this was not enough, Tuesday was also the day we heard An Taoiseach angrily deny an Irish Daily Mail front page story saying the government had planned a roadshow to attract cuckoo funds.

“Not true” the Taoiseach and his housing minister told the Dáil. “There is no roadshow to attract any cuckoo funds…”.

Ah, but there is, said Irish Daily Mail reporter Craig Hughes. Posting a scan of the internal Department of Finance note on Twitter, the following morning.

By Wednesday, the Taoiseach was back at Leader’s Question and delivering on the role he has spent months devising for himself, that of spokesperson-in-chief for the civil service.

It is a role to which he can often sound particularly suited. Though it is clearly not the one to which he was nominated, namely the elected political leader of government.

This time the spokesperson-in-chief was telling the Social Democrats Co-Leader, Roisín Shortall that MetroLink would not take an extra ten years to deliver. That’s all just spin, he protested, citing the intended early 2022 start date for the planning stage of the project as evidence.

But Deputy Shortall is too wily to fall for that one. She knows that a project starting on time is not the same thing as saying it will be completed on time.

When will it be delivered, she asked? When will folks be able to actually use it?

It’s a reasonable question.

It’s also a question you would hope might concern our head of government, the Taoiseach, a T.D. elected by the good people of Cork South-Central for over 32 years and a party leader for over a decade.

It seemed, it didn’t.

His response was not that of a canny political leader eager to drive forward on a big project. It wasn’t even that of a shrewd senior civil servant.

Rather, it was the kind of passive reply that wouldn’t have seemed out of character coming from the lips of a jaded, near-superannuated, middle-ranking civil servant. He said:

“No one in here can determine the length of time that will be involved in getting over those timeframes, challenges and so on that inevitably happen with projects as large as this. What has been provided is the funding to underpin the project in the national development plan.”

Should we be surprised the government has not learned the lessons of Zapponegate, when the more vital lessons of the economic crash seem lost on the Taoiseach?

The worst of the old habits were back. The focus was once again on inputs, not on outputs. We have provided the funding. Our job is done.

Martin’s attempt to declare his government’s public transport plan for Dublin a success by citing how much will be spent on it now, rather than when people can travel on it, it is not merely a throwback, it is a denial of so many of the key lessons Martin had identified in the first years of his leadership.

Just when we need a Taoiseach, and a government, driven by the goal of daily impressing on the apparatus of government the people’s need to see delivery on housing, health, transport, and the quality of life, we have one that sees its role as explaining the government’s problems to us.

Too many in and around the political element of this government interpret the representative role the wrong way around. They do the same with the concept of accountability.

Rather than representing and presenting the public’s needs and concerns at the heart of government, its ministers, and – sadly – too many of its back benchers, see their function as representing the government’s difficulties to us, the public.

I was ranting about all of this in a WhatsApp chat with a colleague during the week when I used Micheál Martin’s quotes with an “as MM said” to identify the source.

“When you say MM” came the response, “do you mean Micheál Martin or managerial minimalist?

In one line they summed up the problem.

Martin’s whole approach as Taoiseach is that of managerial minimalism. It is a style which he may have gotten away with, a few decades ago, in a calmer time. But not today.

Big weighty decisions are eschewed in favour of micro management, though the type of managerial minimalism favoured by Martin demands more time, more late nights and more lengthy consultants reports than the broad brush, big picture leadership of some of his more illustrious predecessors.

To be fair to Martin, the trait is far from unique to him. It is not even unique to the government side of the Dáil. It is every bit as much on show from Sinn Féin’s Stormont ministerial team. Which makes Martin and McDonald’s clashes at leader’s questions appear all the more depressing.

Each accuses the other of precisely the same thing they each do when in government. And while McDonald’s rhetoric makes her sound as if she is at least on the public’s side, a serious scrutiny of the substance suggests otherwise. How you can justify opposing the delivery of 850 homes on Oscar Traynor Road in the throes of a housing and rental crisis that is that is characterised by a lack of supply, is beyond all logic.

Not that everything coming from the Dáil last week was so dispiriting or disheartening. In fairness, it rarely is. While some at the top may have forgotten whose interests they are there to serve, most TDs across the chamber still know it. And practise it.

This was evident in Fianna Fáil TD, John McGuinness’s distressing but powerful speech on the near criminal failure of the gardaí, the HSE and Department of Health to intervene and stop the abuse suffered by Grace and others.

His intervention was a reminder that every T.D. has a responsibility to hold both the government of the day, in the form of its ministers, to account and also the various state agencies and bodies that operate under government’s authority.

This is something that Deputy McGuinness’ party colleagues in Fianna Fáil headquarters should note, as they omitted to include any link, or reference, to his speech in the weekly e-bulletin sent to party members after 5pm on Friday.

This absence seems very odd indeed as Deputy McGuinness’ speech figured prominently on several online party member forums and has more views on Youtube alone than the last 100 official party YouTube videos combined.

It does start to look as if the current leader’s managerial minimalism now governs the party’s entire political outlook.

For the sake of my former party and the future of moderate politics, I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

RollingNews

From top: Paddy Power campaign with football manager Jose Mourinho; Derek Mooney

Maybe it’s the recent media talk about the perils of online gambling. Perhaps it’s the publicity around Minister James Browne’s proposed Gambling Regulation Bill. Whatever the cause I am sure I am not alone in noticing a dramatic increase in the volume of gambling ads on TV, but especially, online.

It’s striking. I cannot count how many times I have heard “the special one” ad coming at me from my screens, both small and big.

I read somewhere that gambling adverts have now replaced beer and drinks adverts, in pre-eminence, particularly when it comes to an association with sports.

The argument is that gambling advertising has now filled the void left by the disappearance of beer advertising. It’s a potential void which also has an entertainment component, thanks to the vast amounts of money the big breweries spent on creating entertaining and memorable adverts.

Which brings me back to that annoying Jose Mourinho/Special One advertising campaign. It first appeared on our screens over two years ago.  While it has none of the wit or creativity of a “Wassup” Budweiser commercial or the memorable Guinness dancing man ad of the 1990s, the ad’s makers knew their audience. So the ad is more targeted, including some clever easter eggs for the more informed viewer.

But could there be another reason why we seem to be seeing so many more gambling ads these days? 

It is just to do with them replacing drinks ads, or might the pandemic have something to do with it?  Could the reduced opportunities for us to pop down to the bookies to place the occasional bet, persuaded the gambling companies that they had to drive more of us to start using their Apps and websites?

Might this explain why some of the adverting, particularly the ones promoting online gaming and virtually casinos, have the underlying theme of: now that we cannot together in the real world, let’s get together to have a punt in the online world instead?

But it’s not just the volume of online gambling advertising that has risen. So have the problems. It’s as if the two things have some correlation. There is more than a little evidence that problem gambling has increased during the pandemic.

GamblingCare.ie, a website which aims to help people with gambling problems, observed back in March that its site was was seeing a 180% increase in visits. The website is funded and administered by the Gambling Awareness Trust, a charity funded by donations from the online and retail betting and gaming industry in Ireland.

Studies on gambling patterns during Covid-19 lockdowns found that while the general population gambled less frequently during lockdown, partly due to betting shops being closed, some forms of gambling increased.

Research from the University of Bristol and published in May, found that occasional gamblers were more than twice as likely (than before the pandemic) to gamble online, while regular gamblers were six times more likely to gamble online.

In these cases online gambling included playing online poker, bingo, and casino games.

Professor Alan Emond, of the University of Bristol’s Medical School, said:

“This study provides unique real time insights into how people’s attitudes and gambling behaviour changed during lockdown, when everyone was stuck inside and unable to participate in most social activities. The findings reveal that although many forms of gambling were restricted, a minority of regular gamblers significantly increased their gambling and betting online. As with so many repercussions of the pandemic, inequalities have been exacerbated and particularly vulnerable groups were worse affected.”

It can be entertaining to take a chance and have a bet on a race, a football match, or the outcome of an election. Most of us can gamble occasionally with no negative impacts. There is no argument for outlawing gambling.

But many cannot do this. Gambling can be a addictive and it is an addiction which causes huge problems for a sizeable number of us. The increasing move to online gambling may make is easier for many to have a harmless punt, but it causes a potential crisis for some, particularly young males. Minister James Browne’s move to regulate both advertising and online gambling is to be welcomed, but based on the experience of other countries it will take more than just a piece of legislation.

The phrase “gamble responsibly” now features prominently on many of these adverts, but what does it mean? Isn’t it an oxymoron that is along the lines of advising someone to drink drive soberly? 

The phrase itself comes from the industry itself, being coined by a Las Vegas casino.

Though the sentiment behind it is well meant, the problem for many is that  this approach takes all the blame away from the addictive nature of the games  and puts it on the addicted player instead. To quote Sol Boxenbaum, a Canadian expert on gambling addiction:

“the compulsive gambler can no more gamble responsibly than the alcoholic can drink responsibly or the drug addict can inject cocaine or heroin responsibly.”

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Pic: Paddy Power

Above from left: Sinn Féin spokesperson on Finance Pearse Doherty, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill, President of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald TD and spokesperson on all-Ireland economic matters Conor Murphy arriving at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2021 at the Helix Theatre, Dublin on Saturday; Derek Mooney

For about twenty years I lived within a ten-minute walk of the RDS and Simmonscourt. This was particularly useful for the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheiseanna.

It meant I could soak up the atmosphere and anticipation in the hall during the build up to the party leader’s speech, but quickly nip home to see the full speech live on TV and catch the RTÉ news review.

This gave me a better sense of how the speech played in the world outside, as I was seeing what the people at home saw… well, those few who bother to watch these things.

It was a practise I continued whenever the Árd Fheis was in Citywest or Killarney. Once the warm-ups started, I headed to my hotel room, watched it there. Rushing down to the bar afterwards to catch up with friends and join the crush getting to the bar.

While seeing it delivered live on TV gave you a better sense of how the leader had performed, the critical difference was seeing what clips RTÉ chose to use in their news coverage. These were the pats of the speech that most punters were going to see, and that would decide what messages they took from the speech.

Invariably, the clips were the ones you had hoped they would use, the key soundbites, honed and crafted in the days and weeks before.

What you could not control however, though I know some did try, was the surreal doughnut that gathered around RTÉ’s David Davin-Power (above) as he broadcast live from the back of the hall.

There he critically assessed the mood of the delegates and of the entire Árd Fheis, like a political Frank Rich, offering an instantaneous review of what effectively was a theatrical occasion, though one that was more off-Broadway, than on.

From what I have seen the reviews following last Saturday’s Sinn Féin Árd Fheis have been generally positive, or at least in line with what they would have expected. Even more positive were the previews in the days leading up the gathering in the Helix theatre. Most, especially the ones in the Northern Irish and British media, focused on the Shinners heading the polls both North and South and speculated widely (or do I mean, wildly?) on Sinn Féin not just being in government, North and South, but leading it.

Doubtless the prospect of government weighed heavily on the minds of delegates over the weekend as evidenced by the party vote to somewhat change its stance on the Special Criminal Court. The change itself is nowhere near as dramatic as some are spinning, but it is probably sufficient to decommission this issue at the next election, denying both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael yet another avenue of attack.

It is just one more step in Sinn Féin’s gradual progress to shatter the glass ceiling that many thought would keep it in single digits… and then in the mid-teens. It’s a road that the Shinners have been on in recent years, most particularly since its electoral decline in the 2019 local and European elections.

Showing a maturity of purpose and intent that seems to have somehow eluded the two other main parties, Sinn Féin took real lessons from its 2019 shellacking. It saw that the voters were looking for change, but that this did not mean just any old change. They saw that voters wanted a party, or parties, with innovative ideas and ambitious solutions, not yet another party of protest.

This is not to say that the progress has been all down to what Sinn Féin has said or done or that Sinn Féin has not occasionally drifted back to being a party of protest and whining.

While Sinn Féin has mostly seemed ready to change itself and to become a party fit and ready for government, there are still question marks over whether it can become a party of government, even a party leading government.

These are not the ones proffered by the Taoiseach when speaking with the media after his Bodenstown address yesterday. His questions have a legitimate basis, but it appears that no one around Martin has yet realised that none of this is denting Sinn Féin’s poll ratings. If anything they are helping them, especially when such imprudent sycophants such as Senator Ned O’Sullivan pull a Godwin’s Law á la Maude Flanders.

While Sinn Féin shows all the signs of being ready to do what it takes to get into government in the twenty-six counties, its fate depends on two key factors, both of which lay entirely outside its control.

The first is what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael do. The fumbling and stumbling leaderships of the two traditional main parties is possibly a better driver of support to the Shinners than Mary-Lou, Pearse and Éoin combined.

This is being a tad unfair perhaps to Fine Gael. For almost a decade Fine Gael has had a personal stake in the growth and success of Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin is a better foil and a better political enemy for Fine Gael than Martin’s Fianna Fáil. It offers a clearer polar opposite. One that allows both Sinn Féin and Fine Gael to starkly present themselves as the only available political options as they attempt to cannibalise what remain of Fianna Fáil.

But the strategy, which has guided most of Varadkar’s manoeuvrings, has backfired… and badly. Rather than offering itself as the one true centre right alternative to a lefty Sinn Féin, Varadkar has now changed tack and is leaving Fine Gael blurred and amorphous.

Almost as blurred and amorphous as Martin’s Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin’s progress to office is highly dependent on Fianna Fáil’s continuing stagnation and the perception that is current leader has becoming increasingly antagonistic to the idea of having any serious discussion on Unity, either in terms of how we move towards it or what the new constitutional arrangements could be in new all-island Ireland.

The second factor is the attitude of parties on the left to either going into government with Sinn Féin or propping up a minority Sinn Féin government. Will the leaders of labour and the Social Democrats be willing to let their parties become political mudguards for a highly controlled and disciplined Sinn Féin administration?

While the allure of high office may be tempting to some, I believe there is still sufficient commitment to policy principles in both parties that there is little possibility of either party going into government without major policy concessions, particularly in the area of justice and law and order.

Besides, as the Dublin Bay South by-election result showed, smaller parties on the left have little to electorally fear from Sinn Féin when they have strong and credible candidates. Though we should be cautious about extrapolating too much from By-election results, the fact that Sinn Féin could not get itself beyond 10% across almost 80% of a constituency where it already holds a seat, tells a story.

In the run-up to the by-election I genuinely believed Sinn Féin had a chance of winning the seat. They picked a strong candidate with sold local connections and a proven history. The local organisation indeed the entire Dublin and national organisation was mobilised behind her. There was a masterful get-out-the-vote operation across a large swathe of the constituency, yet the Shinners were beaten by over 2:1 by labour’s Ivana Bacik across most of the constituency.

Despite the current hype and hoopla in some circles, Sinn Féin is not on some inexorable march to government in Dublin. It most certainly is not an impossibility. But, as the latest polls have shown, Sinn Féin is still a long way short of the winning line, so it will require the continued indifference and masterful inaction of the other two parties for it to become a likelihood… for now.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

Earlier: Shedding

 

From top: Minister Eamon Ryan, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tanaiste Leo Varadkar; Derek Mooney

The idea that the way to stop folks breaking rules is to make more rules is akin to saying if two wrongs don’t make a right… let’s try three.

It is absurd to hear the government talk about not lifting restrictions only days after boasting about our being the Covid resilience world leader.

Yet that’s where we are. You cannot turn on a news show without hearing yet another minister preparing us for the October 22 re-opening not going ahead.

The Taoiseach took it a step further in yesterday’s Sunday Independent. There he hinted that the government had already decided to pause further reopening. As if to sugar coat this failure of policy, Martin sought to comfort us by saying:

“… we are not contemplating going backwards. The only issue facing us now is going forward”

If he is expecting the public to be grateful that we are not going back into lockdown, he will be disappointed.

The government is doing this the wrong way around.

Rather than passively accepting that they cannot go ahead with the October 22 re-opening, they should be proceeding with it. Rather than preparing us for disappointment, they should also be tasking public health officials with putting the necessary measures in place.

The majority of businesses, organisations, and the vast majority of us – by which I mean the majority of the 90% plus who are vaccinated – are fed up with the remaining restrictions. We do not take to the streets to protest the way the anti-vaxxers do. But that does not mean we are content to see another deadline slip by, unhonoured.

People know there are dangers and difficulties. That is why people got the vaccine in such incredible numbers. It is why people accepted and tolerated the longest lockdowns around.

They know that the new case numbers have risen in recent weeks, hitting 1,380 yesterday, though that is down from the alarming 2180 the day before.

They know there has been an increase in the numbers of Covid-19 patients in hospital, with daily admission figures now outstripping hospital discharges by almost 2:1.

But they know something else. They know that over 50% of those admitted to hospital, and sadly 65% of those who go in to ICU, are unvaccinated.

They know that our numbers in hospital and ICU are still among the lowest, though they are not as low as they were three weeks ago.

They know that over 90% of people over the age of 12 are vaccinated, leaving less than 10% of us, unvaccinated.

As dubious as this silent majority is about the notion of a “right to be unvaccinated,” they accept that opting not to get the Covid vaccine is a personal choice that people are free to make.

But they also know there is no right to be shielded from the consequences of your own [in]actions.

Postponing the October 22nd re-opening because of the vaccine hesitancy of  some 300,000 of our fellow citizens is neither fair nor proportionate.

I doubt many of those who have opted, either purposefully or unintentionally, to go unvaccinated would believe postponing the reopening is a fair response.

So, what should the government do?

Well, it should stop re-reading Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking and start looking around to see how other countries are managing to keep their numbers down.

Then it will see that many of those countries who were doing worse than us a few months ago, are now faring much better. They will see that all these countries use antigen testing a lot more than we do, a point made many times by Prof Luke O’Neill, including yesterday in the Sunday Independent.

They will also see that these countries apply the Covid cert/pass requirement to all indoor activities/mass gatherings, and to all employment settings.

We should too.

This would enable 90% of us to get back to a relative normal, both in the workplace and socially.

The vaccination scheme would remain voluntary. There would be no compulsory vaccination. People who decide against getting the vaccine would have the negative test option to allow attend their workplaces.

Only those who refuse to get the vaccine and also refuse to produce regular negatives tests would fail to benefit from the re-opening.

Having to produce negative text certs every days might encourage more people to get their shots. At the moment only just over 1,000 persons per day are registering to get vaccinated.

Employers and employees are perplexed that a punter entering a café, pub or restaurant must produce a Covid cert/pass, while employees going to work don’t.

As France, Germany and Italy have shown there is no data privacy or equality law obstacle to doing it. All the government has to do is to make the production of a Covid pass/cert, or a negative test, mandatory. Do that and the GDPR need for a lawful basis for requesting information is met.

For months political pundits have been wondering if the government parties might get a Covid bounce in the polls.

But …rather than the parties getting a vaccination bounce from the public, how about the government give the country the vaccination bounce it needs by proceeding with the October 22nd reopening?

That would show leadership. Who knows though… showing leadership might even provoke the public into giving Varadkar, Martin and Ryan the polling bounce the leaders long for but, as the two latest opinion polls confirm, never get.

Though the two polls, in The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times (Ireland), differ starkly in some respects, they agree on several findings. They also show a degree of consistency with recent polls.

They both show Sinn Féin well in front of the pack, each putting Mary Lou’s party at 31%. They also show the Greens, Labour, and the Social Democrats at between 4% and 6%.

It’s when it comes to the support figures for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that the two polls differ. Dramatically and diametrically. But, even so, the polls show the two parties combined at either 42% or 44%.

This is not good news for either Martin or Varadkar, regardless of which of them you think, or hope, is ahead. It is very unwelcome news for middle ground politics.

In 2016, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined were on 50%. By the end of 2018 and for most of 2019, the two parties were edging their combined total up to 60%. Today it has tumbled back down to less than 45%.

Both parties need to take a long hard look at themselves and change tack soon. Their current zero-sum game-playing is hurting both… and benefitting no one.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

From top: Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Dublin Castle last week; Derek Mooney

As I have mentioned before, the truest rule of politics is Lyndon Johnson’s “never tell a man to go to hell unless you can send him there.”

It recognises that today’s enemies may be tomorrow’s allies, while warning that hollow threats only expose the weakness of those making them.

My second favourite political saying is:  You buy your colours on your way into a match, not on your way out.”

It comes from someone a million miles away from LBJ, the Yellow Rose of Finglas, the late Jim Tunney. Tunney was a junior minister, Lord Mayor of Dublin and a Fianna Fáil TD for 23 years. He prided himself on his absolute loyalty to his party leader, especially Charlie Haughey.

Not only had Tunney a penchant for quoting himself, he did it in the third person. He uttered the phrase less as a strategy and more as a self-description, especially when defending his decision, as parliamentary party chair, to hold open roll call votes, rather than secret ballots.

Though this had the effect of legitimising the arm twisting and bullying of TDs, buying your team colours on your way in still works as a guiding principle. It is better when politicians declare where they stand on the big issues in advance, rather than waiting to see what way the wind blows. This is particularly true for those who have attained positions of great leadership.

I added “attained positions of leadership” codicil as I am not so naïve to imagine that even the most righteous aspiring leader doesn’t need to duck and weave as they climb the greasy ladder.

So, where am I going with all of this, you ask? Well… Tunney’s phrase kept popping into my head as I mulled over the government’s decision to send both Minister Simon Coveney and Government Chief Whip Jack Chambers to the well-intentioned, but ill-considered, Church Leaders’ service in Armagh.

I made the arguments against the Irish Government attending the service here three weeks ago. Put briefly: I don’t object to the service and can see why the Churches think it fine. I no problem understanding why Unionists and Loyalists wish to celebrate Northern Ireland’s foundation. Why should I? Its creation is a basic fact of this shared island’s often sad history.

But I do have an problem with the idea that making a gesture is more important than our elected leaders staying true to who they are.

The purpose of commemoration, especially the commemoration of events that were divisive, is to encourage all sides to broaden their sympathies without requiring them to abandon beliefs or allegiances.

To Tunney-fy it, you don’t buy both sets of colours on the way in or way out of the match just to convince the other team you’d be just as happy if they won.

They simply won’t believe it and they also won’t respect you. Yet it seems that is what we have done in agreeing to send Coveney and Chambers… or should I say, half done.

If the intention of sending both ministers was to show governmental bipartisanship why send one senior and one junior? Why not one send one of the five Fianna Fáil senior ministers at the Cabinet table alongside Coveney? Why pick Jack Chambers and not Norma Foley, Michael McGrath, Charlie McConalogue, Stephen Donnelly or Darragh O’Brien?

Did the exalted five decline the poison chalice knowing the problems they would stir up for themselves with supporters and back-bench colleagues if they accepted?

Was Jack Chambers just the poor unfortunate who was holding the passing parcel when the music stopped? Or did Micheál Martin conclude that Chambers, whose much snapped visits to sports facilities across the country filled the Instagram timelines of countless TDs and Cllrs, might “benefit” from close association with his latest unpopular position.

We might never know… or care. But whatever the reason, no one could hail it as bold. But then neither boldness nor bravery in decision making were traits much associated with Micheál Martin. I know this is not how Martin’s supporters see it. I can almost hear them hailing his Repeal the 8th position as an example of him leading from the front, as I type.

It is a very fair claim. He did take a clear position. It was one that did not find favour with most in his own party. And, as we saw with the “informed” partial leaks from the party’s internal report into its dire GE2020 showing, many around Martin still blame that on TDs not backing Martin on Repeal the Eighth.

But things are not that simple. It wasn’t until the publication of the full report that it emerged that Fleming’s committee had attributed the GE2020 failures to a far wider range of factors.

The report pointedly remarks that Fianna Fáil’s position on Northern Ireland today does not differ significantly from other political parties. It also laments the dominant role played by full-time “officials of the Party” both in election management and manifesto preparations.

It also cites the December 2018 extension of the Confidence and Supply Arrangement with Fine Gael, a solo-run Martin decision which his supporters are less keen to mention, and the finding that “the majority of [party] members are unclear about our distinct identity.”

Let’s focus on this last finding. Notwithstanding the passivity of the language, the finding itself is shocking. It means that the party’s leadership has failed over the past decade to give members a concise vision or message to differentiate Fianna Fáil from other parties.

So what chance do these members, who select the candidates, have in convincing the voters?

It is a fundamental problem to which there is straightforward solution: define yourself. Fail to define yourself and you allow others to define you. This is what has been happening to Fianna Fáil in recent years.

At the 2020 election Martin failed repeatedly to define Fianna Fáil, so Sinn Féin did it for him with a definition that said there is no difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. It was a dishonest portrayal, but Martin’s actions since the election have only served to encourage it.

A political party’s definition and identity comes from the leader. The leader gives expression and substance to the party’s defining characteristics. They embody what is different or unique about the party.

It is what Fianna Fáil has done across its history. Rather than referring to the first, second, third or fourth Fianna Fáil periods in government, we speak of the de Valera, Lemass, Lynch, Haughey and Ahern eras.

These leaders embodied the party’s identity. But they also drove it. As you look back you can see how that identity matured and evolved according to the challenges and demands of the time.

Thus Lemass serves loyally in the more protectionist de Valera governments, but then seamlessly leads Fianna Fáil to championing modernisation and expansion, promoting a new generation of leaders from O’Malley to Lenihan to Haughey.

It is remarkable that the self-identifying historian Martin chooses not to learn these important lessons from his own party’s history.

Instead his considered response, as leader, to his party’s parlous position is to disavow any role or responsibility in setting the party’s direction, choosing instead to set up a special commission to “review the aims and objectives” of Fianna Fáil.

So, Martin has boldly and bravely sub-contracted out a critical leadership function to a 12-person commission. A commission consisting of 4 TDs, 1 Senator, 3 Councillors, 3 membership reps and one of the aforementioned “officials of the Party” mentioned in the Fleming Report. All chosen by him.

Martin has now declared himself entirely content to allow a random committee to define tomorrow’s Fianna Fáil. While it is undoubtedly better that it be done by a group appointed by him rather than allowing Fine Gael and Sinn Féin to continue to do it, it is still a craven abrogation of political responsibility by Martin.

The fact that the leader of Fianna Fáil is no longer bothered about when he buys his team colours shouldn’t shock us, but neither should he, or his supporters, be surprised that fewer new people are looking to don his team colours either.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

Meanwhile…

Anyone?

At top from left: Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar TD, Minister for the Environment, Climate, Communications and Transport, Eamon Ryan TD and Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien TD at the launch of Housing for All – a New Housing Plan for Ireland; Derek Mooney

After weeks spent playing catch-up on the self-inflicted mess that was Zapponegate, ministers and advisers will be relieved to be dealing with real hard political issues.

And there are no shortage of them. Over the next ten days we will see the fruits of their behind-the-scenes labours delivered via two major announcements. The first comes today with the launch of the National Development Plan (NDP). The second comes next week with the October 12th Budget.

Political convention suggests that the long-term political fate of this government rests on the success of these two events, plus the Housing for All package announced last month. But political convention hasn’t been right for a while, and there is no great reason to thank that is about to change.

Though the NDP overshadows the Budget when it comes to the amounts involved, it will be a decade before we start to see if it is working or not. The NDP is the political equivalent of planting trees in whose shade you will never sit, though here it is more of a case of politicians delivering infrastructure for which they’ll never get the political kudos.

But there is another reason why next week’s Budget may matter more in the short run. In terms of personal and political prestige this Budget will be Micheál Martin’s one great chance, over his remaining 62 weeks as Taoiseach, to put his own mark on this government’s legacy.

Though he will hope to still be in situ for next year’s Budget, he will be into the lame duck stage by then. He will oversee the budgetary negotiations phase as Taoiseach, but officials and colleagues will know that he will not there when it comes to its implementation.

As last year’s Budget was largely dictated by Covid, this is the only one whose drafting, crafting and implementation Martin will see through from start to finish. So it is vital for Martin, and for his constituency colleague and putative successor, Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath, that the pundit reviews hail it as a Fianna Fáil driven budget.

Martin’s proclivity for saying that every issue from housing to health to transport is “key”, is worrying his troops. Thus you see Fianna Fáil backbenchers raising the stakes, fearful that the far from electrifying Housing for All launch, about which I opined a few weeks ago, will be followed by a Budget that fails to deliver on the handful of commitments made at the 2020 election.

Fianna Fáil representatives from across the party are demanding significant increases in pension and other key welfare rates. Their very public calls were calculated to put pile the pressure on both Martin and McGrath, though arguably the case for hefty welfare increases was even better made by the string of recent energy price hikes.

This is not to say that today’s NDP does matter to the Fianna Fáil side. It does, but there is a sense that the NDP has been more important for the Greens and Fine Gael, while Fianna Fáil politically focused on Housing for All.

Nonetheless, the NDP is a big ticket item for all three parties. It earmarks €165 billion of investment in key infrastructure projects over the next decade. The new plan, is a major expansion of Fine Gael’s own 2018 – 2017 National Development Plan, a plan that came with a mere €116 billion price tag.

We should know later today how much more bang those extra billions of bucks will deliver. But the three party leaders should stop and recall that the 2018 NDP, which was hailed by Leo Varadkar and Pascal Donoghue as the plan to “transform the experience of all of our daily lives over the coming years” failed to halt Fine Gael’s electoral decline. Fine Gael lost votes and seats in the February 2020 election – a fact that somehow still seems lost on some of them.

Like it or not most folks do not believe the headline figures or claims in these big plans. There is a school of political thought that says that the bigger the headline figure the less likely folks are to believe it.

Actually, it is less a school of thought and more a school of hard knocks. I mean, how credible does announcing a €165 billion plan sound in a week when ministers are being warned of rolling power cuts this winter and Eamon Ryan is telling Dubliners they will have to wait 13 more years for Metro Link?

The Dublin Metro Link was not just a priority in the 2018 NDP, it was estimated for completion by 2027, at a cost of €3 billion, alongside a major expansion of the Dart, electrifying the track all the way to Drogheda, Celbridge and Maynooth – all by 2027.

So, is it the wisest of political moves to continue to have lavish launches of grandiose plans whose targets and numbers the punters tend to neither believe nor trust?

The question is rhetorical. It is also unfair. It is, of course vital, that governments think beyond the 4 to 5-year electoral cycle and make plans for the decades ahead.

We need 10 and 15-year plans. We need ambitious targets, but they should be based as much on past performance and experience as they are on political hopes and desires.

They should also informed by the realisation that distrust in our political institutions is rising and that this creeping political populism will not be abated by institutions just promising more and more, particularly when its populist opponents have the potential ammunition to portray it as delivering less and less… as Mary Lou McDonald did last week on affordable housing.

Speaking of populism, be prepared to watch it being dialled up on Brexit this week as the Tories gather for their party conference. Expect plenty of calls from fringe meetings and even the main hall for the British government to involve Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol with the aim of scuppering it.

The former Tory leader and minister Iain Duncan Smith (deliciously christened Irritable Duncan Syndrome by the late Jeremy Hardy) was urging Boris Johnson to do this last week. Even more moderate and measured pundits, such as Theresa May’s former Special Adviser on Europe, have speculated that the Tories could use the Conference to announce such a move, hoping to suspend parts of protocol around border controls and move checks away from the Irish Sea and back to the border across the island.

While they may not trigger Art 16 this week, there is a growing sense that Johnson’s government is set to play the Unionist card in the coming months as both a means of deflecting public attention from the impact Brexit is having on supermarket shelves and petrol forecourts and as a first salvo in his foreland battle to stop Scotland’s progress to independence.

Not only have we seen the DUP upping the ante by boycotting North-South Ministerial meetings (a flagrant breach of their ministerial pledge as pointed out by Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan and the SDLP’s Nicola Mallon) we also have a former UKIP and Brexit party MEP, Ben Habib calling for the British army to be sent to Northern Ireland to prevent a “creeping Irish unification”.

It seems that Habib, who is the latest Brexiteer to discover a passionate interest in Northern Ireland by way of the Protocol, hasn’t noticed that British Army is far too busy delivering fuel and coping with Brexit shortages to go anywhere.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

No fair-minded person could come away after listening to the RTÉ Radio One documentary, Women of Honour with a positive view of military management, writes Derek Mooney (above)

Whenever I have written about defence issues I have done so from the point of view that we do not properly appreciate the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann/The Irish Defence Forces.

Whether I was bemoaning our failure to treat defence as a political priority, highlighting the problems with retaining personnel, or lamenting the gross underuse of our Defence Forces on national cyber defence, I have often portrayed military management as being a hapless victim.

While my benign depiction of a military management doggedly doing its best in the face of an indifferent political and administrative system, is fair in the instances listed above, it is not always the case.

No fair minded person could listen to Kate Hannon’s compelling, but distressing, RTÉ Radio One documentary, Women of Honour, and come away with a positive view of military management.

Listening to the documentary was difficult, but it is essential listening for anyone with any interest in Irish defence matters.

Hearing former members relate their ordeals of rape and sexual assault was harrowing, but then hearing how their senior officers and adjutants responded when told of the attacks, was enraging.

These senior officers did nothing. But, in doing nothing they became accessories. Their failure to act against the perpetrators just re-victimised the victims.

It has so many echoes of the sexual harassment scandals that rocked the Canadian military in the late 1990s and again last year. Scandals that exposed a systemic culture of harassment and assault of female military personnel.

Katie Hannon directly references the most recent Canadian #militarymetoo controversy in the documentary’s opening minutes. Katie tells us how a radio report of what was happening in Canada encouraged the former defence force members who comprise the informal Women of Honour group to retell their stories.

They heard how the Canadian military justice system had revictimized the victims and recognised that was what happened to them.

They heard how the “the hostile, sexualised and hyper masculine culture” within Canada’s military system was allowing perpetrators to continue with their careers but leaving victims unable to come forward, and they thought: me too.

Katie’s documentary catalogues a spectrum of failures that ranges from unacceptable behaviours contrary to Defence Forces values and discipline, to ones that are simply criminal, including sexual and violent offences performed by individuals.

But the documentary is not just the tale of a few rotten apple offenders protected by colleagues and mates, it also documents many examples of systemic bullying, harassment, and discrimination.

It tells the story of a female air corps officer passed over for training and promotion. Having exhausted the internal arbitration and redress systems, including an appeal to the Minister, all of which found that there was no discrimination, she took her case to the WRC, the Workplace Relations Commission.

The WRC not only found discrimination, it recommended that these systems be updated before the end of December 2021, saying that:

“…it beggars belief that women should have been serving in the Irish Defence Forces for decades without the Forces’ systems and instruction ever having been appropriately updated to ensure they reflect anti-discrimination law as it applies to pregnancy and maternity”.

The Defence Forces has separate conciliation and arbitration and redress schemes designed to offer a fair alternative to the normal systems of collective bargaining enjoyed by civilian employees, but the schemes were never intended to operate to lower or outdated standards.

The schemes, which consist of the department on one side, and the two defence forces representative associations (PDFORRA and RACO) on the other, were established in 1991 to compensate for the fact that serving Defence Force members may not join a trade union, and thus have curtailed representation and support in the workplace.

Indeed under military regulations serving Defence Force members may not discuss any matter relating to their service with a public representative, which is why you usually see issues of army pay raised by groups organised by groups representing the partners and families of serving members.

If the schemes – that were supposed to deliver enhanced systems of arbitration and redress in exchange for surrendering the right to workplace representation – are not updated to reflect the workplace entitlements enjoyed by others, then the concordat has not been honoured.

One way of addressing that wrong is concede the right of defence force representative organisations to associate or affiliate to ICTU along the lines set out in Section 8.5 of the July 2020 Briefing to the incoming Minister for Defence.

Speaking of that briefing, it is sad to note that it only mentions issues of bullying, harassment, and discrimination in the context of the IMG (Independent Monitoring Group). The IMG was established back in May 2002 and charged with overseeing implementation of the reforms recommended in the Doyle Report The Challenge of a Workplace.

As the Briefing notes, the IMG reported in 2004, 2008 and 2014. Each time it reported progress in culture change, but it also recommended further monitoring. The next IMG report is long overdue. It should have reported in 2019/2020. Though the Defence Department says it has prepared the terms of reference, two years later and the next IMG has yet to be even commissioned.

Though the IMG process has been constructive and productive, is it enough in itself? The Women of Honour would say no.

The 2008 IMG report noted that the number of bullying and harassment complaints had dropped from 27% in 2001 to under 0.5%. That was progress. Indeed we hailed it as such, back in 2009.

But was it as great as we hoped? Was it a sign that the problem had decreased dramatically or was it an indication that many cases were going reported?

That must be addressed, and it is why the Women of Honour’s demand for an independent inquiry, must be granted. It is a call echoed by former Army officer Dr Tom Clonan whose 2000 PhD equality audit of the Irish military, titled “The Status and Roles Assigned Female Personnel in the Permanent Defence Forces” lead to the Doyle Report.

The fact that the problem is widespread and not unique to the Irish Defence Forces should not dissuade the government from acting now. Yes, we could benefit from seeing how others address this problem, but we cannot wait for others to act.

Ireland has a deserved reputation not just for the professionalism and excellence of the personnel we send on UN mandated peace support operations, but for their compassion and understanding.

I know from my own experience of visiting such operations that the Irish men and women I encountered in Lebanon, Chad, Kosovo or Sarajevo had a genuine appreciation of why they were there.

They had no sense of superiority or disdain. They saw the people in whose country they were temporarily based, as equals. People whose basic human rights they were there to protect. I was hugely impressed by the real empathy I heard from troops on these missions, across all ranks, when we chatted informally over pints in the mess.

As they opened up, you could tell just how touched and moved they were by the poverty and pain they saw around them. They knew the high-end politics that had landed these regions in strife, but they focused on the devastation that war and conflict was bringing struggling communities and families. While the cultures and traditions may be different, they still saw families, ordinary men women and children, just looking to get by.

Indeed, one of the most under told stories of the Irish peacekeeping experience is the number of humanitarian and projects that Irish troops have supported and driven, in partnership with Irish Aid.

In Kosovo Irish troops helped renovate schools and provide outdoor sports grounds while in Lebanon they supported an orphanage in Tibnin and aided various elderly care and literacy projects. There are many examples elsewhere too.

These were not PR exercises, gauged to win over local trust, but examples of Irish troops, during their own free time, seeing what the local community needed, be it a hospital, school or clean water supply, and delivering it though individual effort and support.

So how do I reconcile a military culture that fosters these countless examples of caring and compassion with the one that disgracefully fails its own victims of sexual harassment and violence?

I simply cannot. The two accounts are real and true. Which is why, as I said at the outset, listening to the documentary was so difficult.

Across its 108-year history, the Defence Forces has shown itself capable of great caring and courageousness. It has also shown itself capable of absorbing criticism and implementing major reforms. Indeed, few other State institutions have demonstrated the same openness to reform as the Defence Forces.

But the military will need political support and investment to do it – two things denied to it for too long. It must receive both, now.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

From top: President of Ireland Michael D Higgins with Britian’s Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle in 2014; Derek Mooney

With any luck, the controversy over President’s Michael D. Higgins decision not to attend next month’s planned church service in Armagh to “mark the centenary of the partition of Ireland and the formation of Northern Ireland” will soon abate.

It is a row that does no one any credit, least of all those who claim the President has a missed opportunity to extend the hand of friendship to Unionism.

As yesterday’s Ireland Thinks/Mail on Sunday poll reported, a staggering four out of five of us believe that President Higgins is doing the right thing and for the right reason.

He is. But he has more than just popular sentiment on his side. This was not a decision made impetuously or in haste. As the President explained last week, he has been mulling over the invitation from the Church Leaders Group (Ireland) for several months. He shared his concerns with event organisers telling them that the event title was not a politically neutral and presented him with difficulties.

From these remarks it is evident that the President did attempt to create the circumstances to allow him to participate fully as President but, for whatever reason, this could not be done.

To lay the blame for this at the steps of the Áras as some have attempted, including former Taoiseach John Bruton, and the six Independent Senators who accused the President of scoring an “own goal”, is ridiculous.

While the President’s explanation should satisfy all reasonable and fair-minded folks, let me offer three more reasons why the President was right.

The first stems from an important speech made by the former Taoiseach Brian Cowen, back in May 2010. Addressing a conference in UCD on: “A Decade of Commemorations Commemorating Our Shared History”, Mr. Cowen set out the approach the Irish government would take to these commemorations, saying that being:

“…well prepared and carefully considered, should enable all of us on this island to complete the journey we have started towards lasting peace and reconciliation”.

He set out the principles the Irish government would apply to commemorating these significant centenaries. They included:

–        full acknowledgment of the totality of the island’s history and the legitimacy of all the traditions on the island that draw their identity and collective memory from our shared history.

–        recognition of the totality of the history of the period, and all of the diversity that this encompasses,

–        mutual respect central to all commemorative events and that historical accuracy should be paramount.

If these criteria had been applied to the Church’s planned October service in Armagh, then it is quite possible that a way could have been found to holding the event.

But having good intentions alone does not qualify as careful consideration, nor does meaning well do away with the requirement to fully acknowledge the legitimacy of all the traditions on the island.

The principles set out by Brian Cowen continue to inform the work of the Irish government’s Expert Advisory Group on Commemorations, based on its 2018 report which says:

The aim of commemoration should be to broaden sympathies without having to abandon loyalties… The goal of inclusiveness is best achieved, not by trying for an enforced common interest or universal participation, but by encouraging multiple and plural commemorations which remember the past while ensuring, as far as possible, that the commemoration does not re-ignite old tensions. [My emphasis]

Though the Government’s expert committee has been careful in applying these principles, as we saw early last year it was not always consulted or heeded by the last Fine Gael Government. Thus we had Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan’s ill-considered and poorly advised DMP/RIC event. That unnecessary debacle should also have been a salutary lesson for everyone – including those outside of government.

Which brings me to point two: Parity of Esteem. This is a key foundation principle of the Good Friday Agreement. Put simply, parity of esteem, means that both traditions treat the aspirations of the other with respect and acknowledge them as legitimate. The beauty of the principle is that is works both ways and requires neither tradition to deny its own beliefs or political objectives.

In practice, this means that nationalists and republicans have a responsibility – if not a duty – to listen to and engage with the arguments for Northern Ireland remaining in the Union in a serious and respectful fashion. The same applies to Unionism. Neither side is expected to abandon sincerely held viewpoints, political ambitions, or to stop being true to themselves.

As a republican I know that partition and the establishment of Northern Ireland are political realities that cannot be wished away. I also recognise that Unionism sees both partition and the formation of Northern Ireland as positive political achievements, but that does not stop me from knowing, from my perspective, that partition was a tragedy that has had disastrous consequences for both parts of the island.

I understand the pride that many in Unionism take in the foundation of Northern Ireland. I have no issue with commemorating its attainment. Why should I? It is a shared part of this shared island’s often sad history.

But, if those who are commemorating the establishment of Northern Ireland, which is itself the result of Partition, wish the President of Ireland to participate in that commemoration then there should be an explicit acknowledgement that the President represents those who believe that border led to a century of violence and sectarian polarization.

The third point is that not all Unionists are the same. President Higgins’ critics on this side of the border accused him of snubbing Unionists – as if Unionism was one big, united family.

The growth of the Alliance party, and even the Green Party, plus the early signs that the UUP under its new leader Doug Beattie MLA may be gaining some ground by carving out a more moderate and secular Unionist niche, suggests that Unionist voters are less homogenous today than in the past.

This is not to say that Unionists no longer believe in the Union. They do, and strongly – but outside of the constitutional issue, today’s Unionism is less conservative, hardline and inward looking than it was. In the 2016 Brexit Vote 34% of those who self-described as Unionist voted to Remain in the EU, as did 64% of those who identify as ‘Northern Irish’.

A more recent poll asking if the Northern Ireland Protocol was good for Northern Ireland poll found opinion across the Northern split with 43% saying yes and 44% saying no. The North remains deeply divided, but Unionism is not the monolith it was.

Where Molyneaux and Paisley the then leaders of the UUP and DUP could bring a quarter of a million Unionists out on the streets to oppose the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985, recent protests against the Protocol attract crowds of a few hundred.

This does not stop some desperate Unionist politicians – especially from a DUP struggling to cope with falling poll numbers – from contriving to seem offended by President Higgins decision. As the SDLP leader Colum Eastwood MP pointed out, their comments do not advance the cause of reconciliation:

 “…particularly when it comes from quarters that have downplayed and degraded the importance of all-island cooperation for two decades”.

Hopefully, important lessons will be learned and we can move on.

We have some contentious centenaries still ahead, including the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, the Dáil Treaty Debates, January 1922, the start of the Civil War in June 1922, the foundation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), also in June 1922; the killing of Michael Collins in August 1922 and the end of the Civil War in May 2023.

We have known the best way to approach these events since Brian Cowen set it out back in 2010. But we have also seen how being nonchalant, or presuming the response of others, can turn the respectful remembering of our shared history into a painful reliving of it.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

From top Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney (right) is facing a vote of no-confidence in the dáil over his handling of a UN envoy job to Katherine Zappone (left); Derek Mooney

Johnny Carson famously called Oscar night the time when Hollywood stars put aside their petty rivalries and brought out their major rivalries.

So it is with Motions of No Confidence. Oppositions set aside the boring business of holding ministers and governments to account to solely focus on scoring big political points.

Just like the Oscars, motions of confidence are about ritual and theatricality. This applies to both sides – opposition and government.

Opposition politicians who hope one day to become government ministers act outraged and appalled. Governments ministers, who were once opposition hopefuls, accuse their rivals of base cynicism and partisanship.

The script writes themself. Scroll back through no confidence debates of the past 50 years and you see the same formulaic lines pop up each time, just mouthed by different actors, few of Oscar-winning standard.

I am being a tad unfair here as I am lumping all no confidence motions together. Though they are procedurally the same, there are two grades of no confidence motion.

The first, and most serious, is the motion of no confidence in an entire government. Losing one will bring a Government down. It has happened twice: in 1982 and in 1992.

There have also been examples of where the prospect of losing a confidence motion has prompted a Taoiseach to head to the park and request a dissolution. This happened in the 1930s and the 1940s, twice in the 1950s and again in 1987. The November 1994 collapse of the Reynolds government almost qualifies. Though the confidence motion was tabled and never debated – as the Labour party left government – there was no dissolution or election.

The second type is the motion of confidence/no confidence in a particular minister. These are designed to cause maximum discomfort with minimal election risk. They are useful in helping an opposition party garner attention by putting the embarrassed minister in the spotlight and forcing unhappy government backbenchers, especially from other parties, to publicly back him/her.

But they are blunt tools, with many downsides.

Rather than focusing the public’s attention on the merits or specifics of the policy dispute, debates fast descend into four legs good, two legs bad style slanging matches.

The opposition drive to paint the miscreant minister as the most reckless public office holder since Caligula is met by an opposition chorus that the minister in the dock is a modern-day Albert Schweitzer, beneficently dispensing joy, and inner peace upon anyone they meet. The net result is another media process story about political personality clashes.

More counter productively for the opposition, the motion can also permit the government to draw a line under a problem by saying the matter has been debated to exhaustion and that all that can be discovered, has been discovered.

How many of us recall last November’s confidence motion in Leo Varadkar?  Very few I would suggest.

While we recall the allegation that Varadkar, as Taoiseach, leaked confidential Government information to a friend in April 2019, any detail we have comes not from the confidence motion, but from the two-hour question and answer session the week before.

The confidence motion itself threw up nothing new. All it achieved was to allow the issue slide down the media agenda. It also killed off the prospect of raising the matter in the Dail again for at least six months, as Dáil Standing Order 68 says:

“No member shall re-open a discussion on a question already discussed during the preceding six months.”

Though the same Standing Order does allow the Ceann Comhairle some discretion in applying a shorter period.

As yesterday’s lurid and unnecessarily salacious Sunday Independent headline reminded us, almost one year later and the Garda Síochána criminal investigation has yet to be concluded and a file sent to the DPP.

Though Minister Coveney’s allies may not appreciate the linkage or association, this week’s Sinn Féin motion of no confidence in him has some echoes of last November’s one in his colleague.

This week’s motion is not expected to yield any new information. And, just like last November’s effort, it follows an intense parliamentary interrogation that left several key questions unanswered.

Make that two 2-hour sessions. Minister Coveney needed a second round of questioning at the Foreign Affairs committee to repair some of the damage caused by his first shambolic appearance.

Though Coveney has addressed some questions, others remain. These concern his approach to retaining records of texts and his interpretation of what constitutes a job offer. He has also left the Tánaiste with questions to answer.

The first set relate to what he believes constitutes lobbying and how his office treats Freedom of Information requests. The second set concern to his role as Fine Gael leader and his party’s approach in government to collective responsibility and cabinet confidentiality.

For example, has the Tánaiste briefed the Taoiseach on the discussions he had with the Fine Gael minister believed to be behind a damaging Government leak? Indeed, has the Taoiseach, who has ultimate responsibility for the conduct of Cabinet meetings, followed up on these discussions?

Ironically, opening the November 2020 motion of confidence in the Tánaiste, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin said:

“The Tánaiste has acknowledged his error… Lessons have been learned all round and Ministers realise such situations should not occur during this Government.[my emphasis]

But it did happen again. Within three months of the Taoiseach uttering these words Fine Gael ministers were demonstrating how little they had learned and were back to acting as if this was a single party Fine Gael government and Martin was a non-executive chairperson charged with presiding over some unimportant board meetings.

Now the Taoiseach, who seems incapable of chiding Fine Gael ministerial miscreants, is threatening members of his own party by telling them that anyone who does not back Minister Coveney in the vote will face greater penalties than Minister Coveney ever will.

You would have hoped that even uttering these words would have triggered some sense memory in Mr Martin’s brain that he is also the leader of Fianna Fáil.

Seemingly not. He is yet to acknowledge that it was the Fianna Fáil members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, particularly Deputies Cowen and Lawless and Senators Ardagh and Wilson, who conducted the most productive questioning of Minister Coveney.

So, seeing that it was his Oireachtas party colleagues who did so much of the heavy lifting in ensuring Ministerial accountability, might it not be wise move for a Taoiseach, who told the Dáil on Feb 15, 2017 that:

“…every Deputy elected to the Dáil has a duty to do everything possible to make the Dáil work. We reject the idea that the only roles we can play are to support Government in everything or oppose it in everything.”

To follow the sound logic of that approach and request Minister Coveney to come before a Fianna Fáil back bench committee and give them the assurances they need to publicly vote confidence in him?

This should not be done without political threat. It should not be an appear before us or else we shaft you, but rather the reasonable action of an equal partner in government. A partner’s whose thrust has been undermined by Fine Gael gameplaying.

Lest you fear I have gone all Pollyanna; I think Sinn Féin’s confidence motion is ill-judged. Not because I want to see Coveney get away with his laissez-faire approach, but because I fear we will see last November’s history repeat itself.

As I believe Sinn Féin’s move ill-considered, it follows that I think Fianna Fáil TDs would play into the Shinners hands by voting against Coveney, or even abstaining, no matter how aggrieved or angry they feel.

The leaderships of Fine Gael and Sinn Féin are busy playing brinksmanship politics while the Taoiseach is preoccupied with the trappings of office. Meanwhile there are just a few grown-up politicians around the place. Most do not hold high political office – for now, but it is to them we must turn to get through the next few months.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

Rollingnews

From top, left to right: Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar , Minister for the Environment, Climate, Communications and Transport, Eamon Ryan and Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien at the launch of ‘Housing for All’; Derek Mooney

At the end of July I said that come September I would be back and ready to offer my thoughts on what’s happening on the Irish political scene.

Well, I am back, but little did I imagine we would see so much political activity in August. Like many I assumed that politicians from all sides who have – to be fair – endured a difficult 16 months, would leap at the chance of a having a calm and uneventful August.

I was wrong. I failed to the factor-in the capacity of Fine Gael’s officer class to completely overestimate their own guile and ability and to fatally underestimate the public’s impatience with the appearance of ministerial entitlement.

Though the Taoiseach and his allies, more of whom are in Fine Gael these days than in Fianna Fáil, may want to portray #Merriongate/#Zapponegate as a silly season story that is not resonating with the public, his TDs know that’s not the case.

Voters may not be across the minutiae of who said what, to whom, in what text and over what platform… but who is? The stories and sequences coming from the Tánaiste and the Foreign Affairs minister seem to change every couple of days.

But voters are seeing this episode as characteristic of a government that seems remote, detached and more focused on its own issues than theirs.

Martin’s protestations at last Thursday’s Housing for All launch that the whole affair was unimportant, and that the media was treating it as a melodrama, would be less unconvincing if he hadn’t been one of the first to make this an issue by saying he had been “blindsided” by Fine Gael at Cabinet.

Like it or not, that attempt by Martin to explain how and why he, as Taoiseach, hadn’t the political sense to send the appointment back for reconsideration, or consultation with an Oireachtas committee, helped launch this long running saga.

By the way, do a Google search for “Martin and “blindsided” and you will see how often this Taoiseach finds himself the victim of others blindsiding him, be it on vaccines by the EU, by the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol or by NPHET.

Last January I said here that normal politics wouldn’t resume in this country  until what are known as the wet bars, i.e. pubs that do not regularly serve food, were fully reopened.

As I also explained last March how this was not because politics is so linked to drink that you can’t have one without the other, but rather that pub re-opening was expected to be one of the last pandemic restrictions to be lifted and was likely to coincide with large groups – such as Oireachtas parliamentary party groups – being able to again meet face-to-face.

Next week we see that happen when the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party has its first significant non-virtual meeting in over a year. A meeting that should have taken place last week.

While TDs and Senators have had regular Zoom /online meetings over the lockdowns, these have tended to be quite one-sided with the Taoiseach and Ministers more in broadcast than listening mode.

The other major issue with these virtual encounters has been the fact that so much of what was said, and a fair smattering of what was never said, ended up on social media, that many back benchers opted to self-censure, or even to avoid contributing altogether.

The return of face-to-face single room meetings will not only facilitate open and frank discussion of the frustration many within the parliamentary party feel with both government performance and the party’s own poll ratings, it will also allow less opportunity for the proceedings to be relayed outside.

The issues are many. From the unwarranted delay in publishing the Fleming report into the disastrous 2020 election; to the party’s dismal performance in the Dublin Bay South by-election; to its languishing in the mid-teens in the polls; to the prevailing belief that Fine Gael is continually wiping Fianna Fáil’s eye at the cabinet table and that Martin applies double standard on ministerial responsibility to the detriment of his own party colleagues.

#Zapponegate speaks directly and substantially to this latter point, though not as dramatically as the finding in a Mail on Sunday/Ireland Thinks poll published on August 22nd that only 25% of voters think the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin has the most influence on the direction of government policy. A massive 54% said that Leo Varadkar had most influence – note that they did not say they welcomed this.

Martin repeatedly telling colleagues that 75% of his party membership backed the deal with Fine Gael and the Greens is cutting no ice with his parliamentary colleagues. Well over 90% of them backed that deal. They did more than just back it, they used up a great of local goodwill to persuade very uncertain supporters to do likewise.

What they need to know now is where is the clear Fianna Fáil stamp on this government’s policies and actions.  They were expecting to see some of that last Thursday with the Housing For All plan, but what they saw was a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach who thought it was vital to bring a speech justifying the sacking of a party colleague to a landmark Fianna Fáil policy announcement.

Not only did they see and their own leader needlessly rising to the media bait, sabotaging the news coverage of the plan he was there to promote, they then had to listen to him justify his actions saying, “I didn’t show up here with a speech, I came here well-resourced with material…”. A distinction without a difference.

And to add salt to the wound they had to endure the Tánaiste follow up on all of this by shamelessly rewriting history and denying that there were housing shortfalls under Fine Gael. Shortfalls that turned a housing crisis into a housing emergency.

I have said here many times that there is one issue that matters more than any other in politics right now and that is housing. In May I warned that:

The dilemma for Fianna Fáil is that it does not have a distinct and uniquely Fianna Fáil housing policy… Any new one it tries to launch now is tainted on arrival if it is seen to have Fine Gael’s agreement. 

To Darragh O’Brien’s considerable political credit, he and his small team of political advisers have succeeded in delivering a housing program that is funded, well researched, thorough, and grounded in reality.

He was an effective advocate for his program on TV and Radio on the night of the launch, demonstrating a strong grasp of detail and an ability to deal with #Zapponegate questions without throwing party colleagues under buses.

But does the plan contain enough to convince voters that Fianna Fáil both grasps the scale of the housing problem and has sufficiently ambitious plans to address that problem at scale? I doubt it.

There is much that is good in the Housing For All series of documents, but my big fear is that the target of addressing the crisis over 9-10 years, combined with a housing output (new builds) delivery timeline (2022 – 2030) that backloads the delivery (24,600 new homes in 2022, compared to 40,500 homes in 2030) does not convey a sense of Fianna Fáil fully grasping the scale.

Any glitches or hiccups in years one or two and housing will be as big a political issue at the last election as it was at the last one – and that can only spell disaster for Fianna Fáil. Indeed, it is arguable that even without any last-minute problems, that the year one and year two targets are so low as to mean that housing could be an issue anyway.

Be in no doubt. Martin and Varadkar’s individual futures as leaders of their parties hang in the balance now that normal politics is resuming. The news that their respective parliamentary parties can meet again is bad news for both men, and while neither seems to be handling it well, it looks like Martin has the most to fear, right now.

I am convinced that more Fianna Fáil TDs want Martin gone than want him to stay. The number still sitting on the fence has dropped dramatically since before the Summer and I doubt there is anything Martin can say to over the next days and weeks to convince them to save his skin.

We are in the endgame.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

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