Coveney outsmarted FF – but it’s a hollow victory
SIMON Coveney outmanoeuvred Fianna Fáil in the rent cap row like a drawing-room hustler winning a rubber of bridge. Fine Gael’s old codgers imagine their party to be like an elderly aunt and Coveney as her swashbuckling young nephew restoring the old family home to its former glory.
And the victory was that much sweeter because expectations were low: Coveney, usually too polite and too keen to avoid confrontation, would not have been first choice for Fine Gaelers wanting to square up to Fianna Fáil.
But let’s cut the nonsense and put that ‘victory’ in context: it will do little or nothing to resolve the renting crisis but in the very short-term it will restore Fine Gael’s selfrespect.
After his dysfunctional handling of the water debacle, Coveney has redeemed some of his earlier promise as a future leader by holding firm on the rent cap.
Fine Gael’s testosterone reserves have been running on empty since it returned to power needing Fianna Fáil’s permission to do almost anything in government.
And the party’s backbenchers have been spoiling for a showdown to remind Micheál Martin and his jeering front bench that there’s a Fine Gaeler in the Taoiseach’s office.
Most of them thought that Leo Varadkar would tame the shams and shrews in Fianna Fáil, and he is the bookies’ favourite to be the next Fine Gael leader.
But anyone who followed Coveney’s timing and adroit political management saw that his aim from last Monday was to wrongfoot Fianna Fáil. FF’s Barry Cowen’s kneejerk objection to Coveney’s plan to cap annual rent increases at 4% in Dublin and Cork before extending it was that it was shortsighted. Cowen called for a 2% cap and it looked like another compromise was on the cards but the Housing Minister stiffened the Taoiseach’s resolve and Fine Gael prevailed. The compromise was obvious from the beginning – the areas to which the 4% cap will apply has been expanded to include Limerick, Waterford and Galway.
Coveney convinced Enda Kenny, Michael Noonan, Pascal Donohoe and even Varadkar last week that he could beat Fianna Fáil.
But he was looking closer to home in strategising his rent cap plan: he is a Corkman, the son of a Corkman, and he would like to challenge the greatest living Corkman in politics, Micheál Martin.
The Fianna Fáil leader has won the same sort of respect and affection from the people of Cork that they bestowed two generations ago on a former Fianna Fáil leader, Jack Lynch.
Simon’s father was personally liked, respected as a minister and admired as a merchant prince – but more on Cork’s yachting marinas than in GAA clubs.
That said, the Irish people don’t mind posh: remember Erskine Childers and Mary Robinson?
Both of them were poll-topping and very popular presidents, despite being candidates from the Big House.
Clawing back a reputation that was sullied by his inept handling of Irish Water is a pyrrhic victory, increasing suspicion and distrust between two parties that need each other. The past week was Simon says ‘me, me, me’ at a time when a more mature politician might have said ‘we, we, we’.
After all, it is impossible to see any Irish government not requiring both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to make up the numbers for the foreseeable future. They must be able to work together.
I SEE opposition TDs are championing Oxfam’s ‘exposé’ into tax loopholes which found Ireland is the world’s sixth worst tax haven – without noting that both Holland and Switzerland are higher up the list.
Finger-wagging and moral superiority is hard to take from leftie zealots – and from charities that depend on the kindness of passing strangers including hard-pressed Irish donors who are among the world’s most generous. Perhaps Oxfam should commute from the high moral ground to down here where we are trying to get any edge that we can, in a very competitive world.
DING dong merrily on Sky! Word is that the Murdoch newspapers will be proffered (just as packages of TV channels were once offered) as part of the Sky Bundle subscription deal – thereby securing the future the titles.
It will be manna from Manhattan – and job security – for the Dublin-based staff at the Times and Sunday Times.
QUOTE of the week is from British singer-songwriter and ex-serviceman James Blunt: ‘If you thought 2016 was bad – I’m releasing an album in 2017.’