Forget new politics– it’s still very much business as usual in Leinster House

WELL so much for the ‘new politics’ we all heard so much about when Fianna Fáil agreed to back the Fine Gael minority government. If we can take anything from the omnishambles that unfolded in Leinster House over the last week it is that ‘Civil War’ politics is still, very much, in vogue.

Like the great Imperial powers who stumbled into war in 1914, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seem to have accidentally found themselves at the electoral cliff ’s edge.

Neither party wants an election but thanks to their posturing – and the turkeys voting for Christmas attitude adopted by backbenchers on both sides – both have found themselves unable to pull back from the brink.

Public cynicism about the ‘new politics’ has been borne out in the most spectacular fashion.

Far from a ‘new politics’, the conduct of many senior politicians hearkens back to the viciously partisan days of the 1980’s.

The behaviour of the 10 Fianna Fáil TD’s who cheered in the Dáil bar as the party’s Justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan delivered his ultimatum on the Six One News – of course this is denied – bore parallels with the aggressive FF loyalists of the Haughey era. That’s not to say that Fine Gael has covered itself in glory either. Whether or not Frances Fitzgerald deserves to be sacked or forced to resign is debatable. However, the revelations of the last week raise serious questions about the Government and its role in McCabe affair.

A key question, that has been largely overlooked amidst the political furore, is how and why the Government and Department of Justice failed to reveal a vital document relating to its involvement in and knowledge of the McCabe case?

As they rushed to defend Frances Fitzgerald, several senior Fine Gael figures said that the proper forum to debate the Fitzgerald/ McCabe revelations is the Charleton Tribunal.

According to this circular logic, the body best suited to investigating why certain information wasn’t revealed to a tribunal is the tribunal itself.

The waters are muddied even further by the fact that a further tranche of documents – relating to Fitzgerald’s knowledge of the McCabe affair – have now been presented to Micheál Martin by Leo Varadkar as part of the Taoiseach’s efforts to avoid an election. This raises several extremely serious questions.

Where have these documents come from? What do they say? Most importantly – given that the Government and Department of Justice say they have always co-operated fully with the Charleton Tribunal – how have these apparently crucial documents only just come to light?

These documents contain information of such significance that they could save the Government but they have only emerged since Friday. How can that be?

There is a danger that in the midst of all the political games being played in Leinster House these questions may be forgotten or swept under the carpet.

That can’t be allowed to happen.