Eoghan Murphy is our Theresa May (inept and clings to office)

EOGHAN MURPHY is Ireland’s version of Theresa May. Both of them are manifest political failures, both refuse to acknowledge their ineptitudes, and both stubbornly and without good cause hold onto office. This is new politics, where performance has nothing at all to do with how long you stay in your job, where bungling defeats are entirely unremarkable, where flops and broken promises sit comfortably beside huge annual salaries and eye-watering pensions.

Eoghan Murphy’s story is a parable of political defeat and decay at the centre-ground of politics. He is living proof the centre no longer holds, that conviction politics garnished with compromise has been abandoned and that all that matters is hanging on to office.

Imagine the brass neck that’s required for Eoghan Murphy to strut about shamelessly in full public view like someone who’s on top of his brief – when, in fact, he hasn’t a shred of political competence remaining.

Almost 3,800 children are homeless in this country, under Eoghan Murphy’s watch. Add in their moms and dads and all the other hapless people who find themselves completely out of luck in this great new Ireland, and the total homeless figure is almost 10,300. Well done Eoghan. Good job. His response to the latest record figures was a study in understatement. ‘The increase in homelessness in February is hugely disappointing,’ he said.

Steady on there now Eoghan, don’t be getting yourself into a tizzy, all worked up like that.

Sure, we all know, as he reminded us recently, that the homeless – like the poor – will always be with us.

During all of last year, Eoghan Murphy managed to squeeze just over 2,000 new-build houses out of local authorities, a woefully inadequate contribution when compared to the number that’s needed. As an answer to a catastrophe that’s been growing for years, that was truly dreadful.

The Fianna Fáil response to the homelessness disaster was hardly any better. In the Dáil, Dara Calleary

pointed out that just 72 social houses had been built in Dublin city last year.

As a follow through, Mr Calleary denounced the Government for merely repeating statements about housing targets from previous years. And that was it.

Deputy Darragh O’Brien pumped out the usual press statement about how, with the figures above 10,000 and all, the whole thing is ‘shameful’.

Not shameful enough though for Fianna Fáil to pull the plug on this Government with none of the talents. Not shameful enough either for Fianna Fáil to insist that they can do better.

Fianna Fáil’s faux opposition will be seen as one of the greatest strategic mistakes in the history of Irish politics.

Micheál Martin has put party above country and by doing so has given centrist politics a bad name.

After eight years of Fine Gael, the homelessness and health crises are worsening. By ‘standing idly by’ Fianna Fáil are entirely complicit – with their fingerprints all over these twin disasters.

And the message is clear – if the politics of compromise and efficiency at the centre can’t present solutions to heartbreaking problems that are wrecking people’s lives, then the extremes will become more and more attractive to a desperate electorate.

Then the shrill voices of extremism will dominate as the binary politics of them and us, right and left, for and against, takes hold as it has in the UK, America and elsewhere.

Theresa May is living proof of what happens when the centre breaks apart. After decades of divisive politics, the UK is having its day of reckoning.

The way things are going here, we’ll soon have our day too – when Eoghan Murphy and other political fiascos have moved on to greener pastures, leaving only disappointment, wreckage and hard choice, no-dialogue politics in his wake.