9-WEEK BREAK …FROM ENDA AND CO.

ELECTION ANXIETY… HORSE TRADING FOR POWER… MUTINOUS MINISTERS… BACKSTABBING BACKBENCHERS. DON’T WE ALL NEED A…

OUR TDs are off on their summer break, with the predictable sounds of public grumblings over their extra-long, nine-week holiday still ringing in their ears. But it wasn’t always thus. There was a time when politicians’ holidays were actually a feelgood news story – well one politician’s anyway.

Back in 2004 and 2005, when Bertie Ahern’s popularity was at its zenith, it became a journalistic staple to follow him to the Galway Races at the end of July. After the Dáil rose every summer, I set off for the now infamous Galway Tent for a week of watching who Bertie spoke to, what he ate and what horses he backed. And I wrote it all down for the readers.

Then photographers would follow Bertie to Parknasilla in Sneem, Co. Kerry, at the start of August, and long lenses would snatch pictures of our celebrity taoiseach in his tracksuit bottoms and runners. We easily learned what pubs he would visit and who he would be sipping pints with, from contacts in the Drumcondra Mafia. It was all breathlessly recorded to fill the long, balmy, quiet period when the Dáil and courts were in recess.

In 2004, though, I was almost barred from the Galway Tent when I got a rare scoop that had just too much information for Bertie’s liking. I got hold of the guest list and we listed the millionaires and developers seated at the 42 tables.

The piece was even accompanied by a colourful table plan that had been a closely guarded secret until then. The readers loved it but the Tent ‘insiders’ were none too pleased. So much so that it was only thanks to the enlisted help of PJ Mara, and the fact that other media coverage was otherwise so uniformly positive, that I was able to secure my triumphant return to ‘Tent’ the following year.

Even at this short remove, it seems like a more innocent time. Because after it came Bertie’s prolonged and acrimonious departure, and Brian Cowen’s abolition of the Galway Tent. But even in 2008, people didn’t know what to make of the new taoiseach’s decision to maintain his family tradition of staying at his caravan in Ballyconneely, Co. Galway.

It was after the financial crisis hit home, later that year, that Cowen’s holidays became a negative story; in fact, he was no longer allowed take holidays. Nowadays, Enda Kenny’s spin doctors make no attempt to turn the present Taoiseach’s summer activities into a feelgood yarn.

And, because of Kenny’s lack of charisma, and the general low esteem in which politicians are held, newsrooms would have little interest anyway. Media are only really interested in the length of holidays TDs and senators take, particularly in the summer, and the tone is overwhelmingly negative.

Ironically though, it was during the ‘feelgood’ days of Fianna Fáil that the TDs and senators were really milking it. For instance, in 2003 the Dáil rose on July 3 and returned on September 30. That’s an astonishing 13 weeks. The first sign that change was needed came in 2008, when Cowen was the new taoiseach. The Dáil rose for a lengthy 12 weeks that year, adjourning on July 10 and returning on September 24; but three days later, on September 29, the banks collapsed and we plunged into an unprecedented recession.

However, it wasn’t until 2011, when Enda Kenny became taoiseach, that the holiday slashing started. The Christmas break was cut from six weeks to three and that summer’s holidays lasted nine weeks, from July 21 to September 14. He also introduced Friday sittings to boost the number of Dáil days, but no legislation was discussed and few TDs turned up.

Is Enda Kenny better off because of these cuts? His puritanical, spin-obsessed approach to politics led him to lose 26 seats, saw his Labour partners in coalition decimated – and his new government barely functions. Fine Gael relies on independents to pass legislation and two of them, Shane Ross and Finian McGrath (a super junior) sit at Cabinet. They, along with a third independent minister, John Halligan, voted against the Government on a Bill brought by Mick Wallace, humiliating Kenny, who was helpless to stop them, an unprecedented concession in Dáil history. Now some of his own backbenchers want him to go soon for fear Fianna Fáil will annihilate Fine Gael if there’s an election.

And all the while Fine Gael depends on abstentions from its sworn enemy, Fianna Fáil, to stay in government. In last year’s spring/summer Dáil session, 33 pieces of legislation were passed; in this year’s period just nine Bills were passed. And, in the latest sickening irony, when the Government wanted the Dáil to rise on July 7, new power brokers Fianna Fáil protested. So it rose last Thursday, July 21. But returns as late as September 27: we’re back to the old late return, then.

Officially Leinster House is in need of refurbishment, its wiring is banjaxed and floors need strengthening. Yet the floor of my office in the old servants’ quarters collapsed back in 2006; the building is in a permanent state of upgrade, like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Ministers just needed a nice, long political armistice.

In fairness though, it is a cheap shot to criticise TDs for taking a long break. Ministers remain at their desks for another week and the committees return on September 5. Speculation about a general election began last September and the political class has not had a break since then. There was the traumatic election itself and then the months of tense horse trading to form a government, and all the while the spectre of an immediate election hung in the air.

Meanwhile, Leo Varadkar has already begun budget negotiations in public for the new term, which promises to be the most tumultuous and tense Dáil session seen since the 2010 bailout year. If the break had not come, Enda Kenny might well have lost his job.

Consider it not so much sympathy for overworked politicians, but greet this break as the offer of a brief respite that allows a cooling down of general election speculation... for now.