The longer this Government goes on, the more damage will be done to FF

Time for some home truths: Martin set out to target Varadkar but ended up raising questions about himself, writes Jody Corcoran

‘As a result, it marches up and down the hill of righteous indignation...’

ON the longest, hottest day of the year, Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin went head- to-head in the Dail and in the supercharged atmosphere of midsummer, a form of truth emerged.

For some, it was an uncomfortable truth, related to the Fianna Fail leader’s view that the former Attorney-General was an unsuitable judge for a position on the Court of Appeal. For most, though, her suitability or otherwise is, in itself, of no particular consequence to their day-to-day lives.

Truth be told, I have no idea whether Maire Whelan is suitable or not, but I’m fairly certain that other more suitable and/or less suitable people have been appointed to the bench before and will be again.

That is not to say that the circumstances surrounding her appointment was not a squalid bit of political business. It was, and Martin was right to call it out.

There is a wider issue, however, into which the controversy feeds, and that is the administration of justice and the mounting body of evidence which shows that system to be borderline, if not entirely, dysfunctional.

From the forced resignation of a Garda Commissioner to the resignation of a Justice Minister, to the stream of Garda scandals, and now to this, a lesser though related event, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the Government’s apThe pointment of the AG to the second highest court in the land, there is a seamless line throughout.

But Fianna Fail has held back from bringing about an election on the wider and most serious issue, despite several genuine reasons to do so. The question is why?

It is rare we get an insight into the privately held views of anybody — their truth — let alone a politician, less so again a prominent politician with ambitions to lead the country. But that is what got from Micheal Martin last week, a form of truth as he sees it.

As you would expect, the political and legal establishment expressed unease at his expression of this belief, truthfully held, and moved to close down such talk.

There was good reason: the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government — legislature, executive and judiciary — is important for reasons we need not go into here, other than to say that it allows for a system of checks and balances.

In the atmosphere of midsummer, then, we must also examine what other truths the Whelan affair tells us about the administration of politics in this country, as opposed to justice.

The first is that this minority government, in the form of the confidence and supply agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, has and will not function properly.

main reason for this failure is that it was always a contrivance, now threadbare, however well it may have appeared on paper as originally devised.

In my view, after last week, the longer this minority government continues, the more damage will be done to both parties, but particularly to Fianna Fail.

An argument could be made that the moment to end it was last March when Enda Kenny had conversations in his head related to a Garda whistleblower wrongfully accused of child sex abuse.

As it happened, Fianna Fail was at 33pc in the polls at that time, but the Government was just a year into office. A further truth could be that Micheal Martin decided against pulling the plug at that point because he wants longer than a year as Taoiseach in return.

There are wider truths for Fianna Fail, though. One is that Leo Varadkar is a young man no longer in a hurry. He can be Taoiseach again in his 40s, and have a life outside of politics after that too, if he so chooses.

Furthermore, there is no certainty that he will offer a reciprocal arrangement to Micheal Martin should the numbers fall that way. If anything, the current arrangement is such he could reasonably argue against and few could disagree.

Micheal Martin must win the next election and be in power or his political career will be at an end. But should he fail, who will succeed him as leader of Fianna Fail? The choice is one of several TDs without experience, who have never held a position of authority or any form of real responsibility, and who have not covered themselves in glory in Opposition either. That is starting to sound more and more like the SDLP to me.

The real truth, however, is that the Whelan affair was not primarily to do with the former AG’s suitability or otherwise for appointment to the Court of Appeal. Nor was it really to do with the way Enda Kenny set about her appointment, although that was as poor a piece of governance as we have come to expect from his governments.

The fuller truth is that the Whelan affair, above all else, was to do with Fianna Fail attempting to take the gloss off Leo Varadkar in his first week as Taoiseach. In that regard, it may have worked — but at a price, because Varadkar took his pound of flesh too.

He rattled Micheal Martin, got under his skin, and showed him to be a man in such a moment who would place on the table the constitutional separation of powers.

In the short run, then, Martin may have achieved a measure of political success last week; in the longer term, however, Varadkar, for the first time, has also raised a question about his rival’s temperament, when it was supposed to be the other way around.

There are further truths about the confidence and supply arrangement, the first of which is that it is sapping the will to live among most TDs in every party and none.

They are in a hyper state of constant alert, exhausted at the prospect of an imminent election and more concerned with their political survival than with the business of good governance. For that reason alone, this minority Government must be deemed a worthy but unsuccessful experiment that needs to be taken off life support.

Another truth is that the agreement was always a contrivance designed, and put in place, by Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin. From Kenny’s point of view, it allowed him his place in history as the first ever re-elected Fine Gael leader. Ho hum. From Martin’s perspective, it allowed Fianna Fail’s new TDs the time and space to pay down election debt and bed into their constituencies, that is, to shore up what was hard won after the party’s existential crisis.

The agreement was also contrived to allow Fianna Fail protect its flank against Sinn Fein, which has not passed up an opportunity to exploit the arrangement.

As it has turned out, however, Fianna Fail finds itself unable to provide proper opposition to a Government, the existence of which it is also underpinning. How could it? It was always a difficult ask.

As a result, it marches up and down the hill of righteous indignation, in itself an exhausting and transparent, not to mention somewhat pointless, exercise.

All truths considered, then, the country would be better for an election in order that a form of proper governance can be restored. At the moment, the electorate is disengaged. As with elsewhere — France, the UK, the US — Martin may find his reward as voters become more and fully engaged. One thing seems certain to me, however. Fianna Fail has nothing to gain by postponing the inevitable for much longer.