Coveney is heading for a fall if he fights bin firms
SIMON Coveney is a decent man. But neither his integrity nor his intentions are questioned by the furore over bin charges. Instead, his intellect and competence are on trial. Watching him scramble for a coherent strategy to end the most recent government fiasco reminded me of an old adage: ‘A good man can be stupid and still be good,’ said Maxim Gorky, ‘but a bad man must have brains.’
Cabinet colleagues and close friends dismiss that criticism of the Housing Minister as using the words of a long-dead Russian writer to damn him with very faint praise.
However, the 19th-century US essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson had another apt quote: ‘It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.’
The Government is trusting Mr Coveney, pictured below, to dig it out of a potential crisis that is already being compared to the water charges debacle.
Is the Housing Minister expecting the kind of blind trust from cabinet colleagues that faith-healers demand from a desperately ill patient?
TRUE to his traditional Fine Gael instincts, Mr Coveney has insisted that competition within the waste industry will keep prices down for consumers. Of course, free-market principles can be applied only when there is healthy competition, but there are too few waste-management companies for to it to be properly competitive in this case.
As recently as last Tuesday, Mr Coveney appeared to rule out any Government cap on bin prices – but panic can make government ministers say silly things they will soon regret. By Thursday, he appeared to have abandoned the competitive solution and hinted that the Government might impose a ceiling on the increases demanded by the bin companies. As soon as this was suggested, legal experts said this would never become law. However, the minister will buy some time waiting for the opinion of the Attorney General.
The Tánaiste tried to give Mr Coveney a dig-out by threatening waste companies with new laws if they are abusing the pay-by-weight system. Which begs a very big question: is there any regulation or checks on the equipment used by bin lorries to weigh the waste? And if not, why not? Leftists in the Dáil seem to be contemptuous of both the well-born minister and the fatcat capitalists in waste management. They will want the bins, like water, to be free.
Fianna Fáil says some 87% of people appear to be paying more under the minister’s plan and will not let him off the hook – or suggest a viable alternative.
Backing the winner in a cage-fight over money between bosses in the waste-management industry and a scion of the Cork merchant princes will not be that difficult.
The form book says the thoroughbred minister and the Government will back off soon enough when they are challenged by a muscular industry.
But if it comes down to scruples, or a lack of them, a face-off between the coalition and the industry will be a hard-fought contest. THE public’s role in the battle for the leadership of Fine Gael is the usual one: taxpayers are footing the bill.
Leadership contenders Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar are apparently competing to boost councillors’ income and social welfare entitlements.
Varadkar is emulating Big Phil Hogan’s shameless love-bombing of councillors by seeking a way to give councillors access to social welfare.
And next week Fine Gael’s 19 senators are to table a motion demanding that Coveney give councillors a €5,000-a-year hike.
Varadkar made the first move and Coveney is expected to match his largesse.
If Varadkar delivers, councillors can expect severance payments and pensions when they step down from office. And if Coveney comes through, their annual €16,565 and expenses will be boosted by a further €5,000.