Fine Gael’s green cheques will be cashed by Sinn Fein

WE all lived our own year in 2017. Looking back, I find one big lowlight and two smaller personal highlights.

The lowpoint was Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney wildly waving a tribal tricolour.

They were supported by the shameful silence of those in Fine Gael who must know this is a betrayal of the party’s pluralist traditions.

Equally shamefully, a dawn chorus of media cheerleaders failed to point up the ignorance and incoherence of their interpretations of the Good Friday Agreement.

Cui bono? Who benefits most? Short term, Fine Gael. Long term, Sinn Fein and its propaganda machine.

Just before Christmas, two journalists saved the face of the profession by sounding serious warnings.

Stephen Collins, broadly supportive of Varadkar as the new broom FG leader, had this reservation.

“Varadkar will be playing with fire if he takes his newly acquired nationalist credentials too far.”

On Christmas Eve, Andy Pollak, a former journalist and founding director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, issued a sombre stricture in The Irish Times.

Pollak’s piece carried a stark title: “Varadkar and Coveney may regret wrapping themselves in the green flag.”

He warned that the Fine Gael government needed to start sending unionists a clear message that their idea of future unity was very different “from the triumphant, utterly unrepentant, ‘tooth and claw’ Sinn Fein version”.

Like me, Pollak can see more than political problems ahead in Northern Ireland if unionists feel cornered by a deal between Dublin and Sinn Fein.

He predicted that without more deep thinking, “I fear we are going to be facing into a bloody maelstrom somewhere down the road”.

But the constant contradictions of the Taoiseach and Tanaiste’s Northern policy did not seem to bother most of the political correspondents, who preferred to focus on personal factors. Pat Leahy, of The Irish

Times, enthused: “The Government’s youth is starting to have an impact.”

Now if the Taoiseach were female Leahy might be risking charges of ageism by his politically correct colleagues in The Irish Times.

Leahy carried on regardless to remark that the FG age factor would have impinged on even those with little interest in politics.

“They’ll have noticed that the Government suddenly looks and sounds a lot different, a lot younger.”

A lot more prone to stupid mistakes too it might be said. And I am not just speaking of Northern policy.

Shane Coleman, writing in the Irish Independent last week, was a lot less convinced that youth was such a plus point.

Pointing out a lack of the savviness that comes from long experience in politics, Coleman said there were plenty of weaknesses in Fine Gael’s “callow cabinet” for Fianna Fail to exploit.

True. But the Fianna Fail shadow front bench shows little sign of being able to exploit them.

Micheal Martin is still carrying too many shadow ministers with an unearned sense of entitlement.

Too many of them suffer from a sense of entitlement, especially those born into Fianna Fail royalty.

Take the shadow ministers’ record on the two biggest issues in Irish politics: housing and Repeal the Eighth. Fianna Fail has a strong historical record in public housing. And Lisa Chambers and Billy Kelleher took up progressive positions on abortion.

But both of these beachheads, particularly housing, have been frittered away by a failure to do the hard graft on social media.

After the massively watched Prime Time on the homeless, Barry Cowen, who has responsibility for FF housing policy, should have been fully primed to respond on Twitter. But not a word.

Eoin O Broin, of Sinn Fein, posted some 14 comments on Twitter during and after the show.

Barry Cowen’s last tweet on housing was five days before the programme was transmitted. Five days.

Since then Cowen has tweeted twice. On December 22, he wished us “Happy Christmas folks”. Last Friday, he tweeted on the hot topic of the 1937 Constitution.

In fact, not a single tweet from Cowen on housing since December 15. You can’t win a modern general election with that kind of laid-back approach.

Cowen also seems a bit spooked by RTE presenters intoning “builders’ profits” like curse words. He only got fully stuck in about incentives on The Tonight Show after Niamh Horan of this parish had first given him eloquent cover.

Cowen is not alone. Same story on abortion. Sinn Fein TDs all over Twitter but Fianna Fail not fully claiming its own position.

Fianna Fail shadow ministers like to fulminate about the Taoiseach’s often in continent interventions on social media.

But they have no real complaint as long as they won’t do the hard graft on social media that causes print and broadcast media to do follow-up stories. The first of my two 2017 highlights was the West Cork History Festival which led to some sharp exchanges between myself and Andy Bielenberg of UCC.

Bielenberg wrote to the Sunday Independent on August 27 to state the late historian Peter Hart (and myself ) were wrong to say that sectarianism was the main reason why Cork Protestants were disproportionately targeted by the IRA.

In October’s History Ireland, Bielenberg wrote, “this sectarianism thesis has now been disproved by our Fatality Index”.

But in the current issue of History Ireland, Professor David Fitzpatrick of TCD, an expert in the period, rebuts Bielenberg sharply.

“Bielenberg repeatedly staked the same claim at the West Cork History Festival in Skibbereen, exhibiting every appearance of scholarly judiciousness. Polite suggestions that his statistical interpretation was perverse were ignored, and the alleged refutation of Hart’s thesis was applauded and widely reported. The Cork Fatality Index had, it seemed, delivered the last word on this contentious subject.” But as Fitzpatrick points out, Bielenberg’s own figures show that 52pc of those executed as spies were non-Catholics although Protestants were only 9pc of the Cork population.

Fitzpatrick concludes thus: “Bielenberg has inadvertently confirmed the credibility of Hart’s original thesis, insofar as civilian fatalities provide an index of sectarianism.” Given RTE’s patchy record in covering the dark side of Martin McGuinness’s past — never shirked in the Sunday Independent —I am glad to say the second high point of my year was the transformation of TV3’s current affairs by The Sunday Show and The Tonight Show.

Sarah McInerney, of The Sunday Show, is the best-prepped presenter on TV.

As a bonus she is fair and balanced when interviewing people she disagrees with. This will be a valuable skill when handling the abortion debate, which is likely to get a lot hotter as it goes on. What she lacks at the moment is a decent slot rather then the morgue of Sunday afternoon.

The same is true of TV3’s big success story, The Tonight Show with Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper.

This is now the “go-to” show on current affairs. With its pacy liveliness, it is pushing po-faced Prime Time out of the picture.

Whatever their private feelings, the two presenters are increasingly working well together from an audience point of view.

Ivan gives Matt (a natural Cork know-all) the necessary reality checks and Matt’s ebullience seems to energise laid-back Ivan.

We no longer feel they are as bothered by the pecking order as before. More and more we trust these two to tell it like it is.

The Tonight Show is no mere Vincent Browne replacement but a fearless rival for RTE. TV3 should be equally fearless, grow a pair, and bring it back to a mass audience 10pm slot.

‘FF shadow ministers complain about the Taoiseach’s use of Twitter but won’t do the hard graft themselves’