Take a look, Leo — Simon, not Micheal, is your main problem

LET’S hope Leo Varadkar was listening to his colleague Brian Hayes MEP speaking to Shane Coleman on Newstalk last Friday.

Hayes is the hard truthteller every party needs to protect itself from delusions. Hayes dealt with two issues: Northern Ireland and Fianna Fail.

Hayes challenged Simon Coveney on Northern Ireland. He went on to speak about the “honourable” support of Fianna Fail in keeping a functioning government.

Hayes had to act with good authority and tell the truth to his own tribe because Leo Varadkar has made two bad mistakes.

First, he gave Coveney the Northern Ireland brief. Second, he squandered Micheal Martin’s goodwill by being high-handed about the Maire Whelan affair.

Let me start with the second one. Here are the two essential points that many in the media muddled.

First, Enda Kenny landed this mess on Leo’s lap. Leo could have made a flying start as Fine Gael leader by refusing to drink from that poisoned chalice. But he drained it to the dregs.

Second, no matter how much the politically correct in the media and law library may mutter, the person of Maire Whelan cannot be separated from the process.

We got a lot of legal swishing about the separation of powers. But David Gwynn Morgan, emeritus professor of law in UCC and an expert in constitutional law, was sceptical of the media chorus bigging up Whelan as a legal heavyweight.

“At the start of the controversy, news commentators followed slavishly the line, obviously fed to them by government information officers, that Ms Whelan was ‘the wisest lawyer since at least Cicero, Solon or Hammurabi’...”

This reassured those of us who believe that if Whelan had been forced to apply for the job of judge in the real world, any interview board would put three strikes against her name.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that booklets for the Children’s Referendum, whose contents the Attorney General’s office had sanctioned, were legally flawed.

In 2014, it was also acknowledged that the advice she gave the Taoiseach on the Guerin Report was also flawed. Finally, and most serious of all, were the adverse findings of the Fennelly Report 2017.

Fennelly noted that Whelan had changed her early oral testimony to bring it into line with Kenny’s version of the Sunday meeting which resulted in the resignation of Commissioner Callinan. He was not impressed.

Few in the media read the Fennelly Report in full. Had they done so they would have realised that Martin was right to respond sharply to Varadkar’s attempt to bracket Whelan with lawyers like Adrian Hardiman, Frank Clarke, Donal O’Donnell and John Murray.

Last week the legal establishment told us that Whelan’s record as a lawyer could not be raised because she was now a judge.

This strikes many of us as equivalent to diplomats who claim immunity when asked awkward questions.

Why should Whelan be given the equivalent of judicial immunity? Especially when it allowed her to escape questioning by the Charleton Tribunal.

Micheal Lehane at RTE, Vincent Browne on TV3 and Shane Coleman on Newstalk were not frightened off and kept a steady focus on the Fennelly Report.

Finally, Niall Collins of Fianna Fail belled the cat last Thursday morning on Newstalk, when he flatly called on Whelan to resign and re-apply for the job.

Leo Varadkar, having brazened his way through the Dail debate, now calls belatedly for a restoration of trust. But deeds, not words, are demanded here.

The Government should apologise for a squalid stroke. Whelan should step down, make herself available to the Charleton Tribunal, and after that apply for the job of judge.

Let me now turn to Leo Varadkar’s second mistake: giving the Northern brief to Coveney who was bulling for a green platform.

Last week, I said Coveney was picking up the green plastic pan-nationalist baton of Peter Barry and would only wave it at Sinn Fein under the direction of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

What’s my problem with the DFA? Simply that they were chief creators of the strategy of dumping Seamus Mallon and David Trimble and giving Sinn Fein pride of place in the peace process.

The DFA, as architects of that supine strategy, had to make sure it went on working, no matter what the price in appeasement.

That means DFA mandarins had to go on normalising the Provos’ party, and promoting a corrupting peace process, no matter what the cost.

Today, that cost means the DFA being more respectful of Sinn Fein than of a democratic constitutional party like the DUP.

The DFA can argue it was all for the sake of peace, as if appeasement was the only choice. Not so. De Valera and Cosgrave would have fought the IRA to a finish.

Coveney is not cut from blue Cosgrave cloth. He prefers to wrap himself in watery Peter Barry green and pursue Barry’s pannationalist habit of working the words “all Ireland” into waffling speeches whose only result is to alienate our Protestant neighbours.

Last Thursday, Coveney was talking to The Irish Times about an “all Ireland” approach to Brexit that would mean a “special status” for Northern Ireland.

The Irish Independent noted: “The comments suggest a marked change in language from the Government.”

Next day, on Newstalk, Hayes challenged the notion of “special status”. Coveney then “clarified” this in the Irish Independent, which added the following:

“At an event earlier Mr Coveney said he was seeking special status for the North, language also used by Sinn Fein and the SDLP.”

Is it not dog whistling to use the same language as Sinn Fein — even if cravenly echoed by the SDLP playing green catch-up?

Later on Friday, possibly feeling his clarification might annoy Sinn Fein, Coveney went back to the Irish Independent to make a bigger green grandstand.

He said that talks between the DUP and the Conservatives were a “distraction” from getting the Assembly up and running.

How dare the DUP think forming a British government is as important as restoring the Assembly Sinn Fein pulled down!

Coveney told the Irish Independent that Arlene Foster had reassured him “over and over again” that any DUP/Tory deal would not compromise the Good Friday Agreement or the peace process.

He went on to make this revealing remark: “We have to take their assurance at face value.”

First, Sinn Fein never signed the Good Friday Agreement and pulling down the Executive was the only act that undermined it.

Second, why make that denigrating remark abut taking DUP assurances “at face value”? Surely safer than taking Sinn Fein’s assurances at face value?

Let me sound my second warning to Leo Varadkar. Your job is in danger. Coveney is still campaigning.

But this time he has a bilious green flag wrapped tight around him.

‘Coveney is not cut from blue Cosgrave cloth. He prefers to wrap himself in watery Peter Barry green’