Vacuous idiocy from TDs who are just playing us all for fools
IT’S a measure of how paralysed national politics is right now that we’ve spent the past week fixated on the utterly puerile behaviour of the likes of Timmy Dooley, Niall Collins and a couple of other Fianna Fáilers in the Dáil. Rather than focusing on the adequacy, substance and meaning of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s apology for the CervicalCheck disaster that has put women into early graves, we have had to endure interminable, across the aisle finger-pointing (they did it too!) that revealed a complete lack of regard for constitutional correctness in Dáil voting.
Rather than demanding a workable and determined public-policy approach to solving the homelessness crisis, we’ve been diverted down a sterile cul-de-sac that exposed national legislators as wishy-washy, devilmay-care falsehoods.
This has been an entirely depressing week for those who believe in politics.
We could have been talking about how to repair damaged relationships with Northern Unionism and how to calm loyalist anxieties before they spill over into sectarian violence – as feared by PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne – because of Brexit and the backstop. But we weren’t.
We should have been seeing Micheál Martin taking his jacket off, rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck into Leo Varadkar and Richard Bruton over their hopelessly feeble attempts to reduce our carbon emissions. That didn’t happen either, because of Timmy Dooley, Niall Collins, Barry Cowen and Lisa Chambers. The Four Smart Amigos.
‘I’ll step out and I might step in again. You press my button and sure, I’ll press yours.’
And then, even when a couple of them voted more than once… not a bother.
LISA Chambers Lisa Chambers admitted she voted twice, by mistake. And despite realising her error she simply decided not to bother correcting the Dáil record. It’ll be grand. The report by Clerk of the Dáil Peter Finnegan into this absurd distraction has Deputy Chambers confirming her dual mandate behaviour. ‘She stated that she did not think it was a massive issue and therefore decided to leave it.’
All of this took place despite the clearest of instructions in the Constitution itself. Article 15.11.1 states that all questions in the Dáil and Senate ‘shall… be determined by a majority of the votes of the members present and voting…’
The words ‘present’ and ‘voting’ go together – conjoined constitutional twins. It doesn’t mean that a deputy who is present in the chamber can casually call on a random passing substitute to cast their vote, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar seems to think.
He has admitted casting votes for colleagues who were in the chamber but somehow were unable to press the button themselves. The whole thing is a vacuous idiocy based on an unconcerned disregard for doing things properly.
And it’s all because politics is now at death’s door, fading before our eyes, empty of any conviction at all – except one. Survival.
The confidence and supply agreement between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has produced political theatre without substance. Nothing matters and nobody cares when there’s no Opposition.
Micheál Martin and Fianna Fáil have banjaxed politics by fettering their responsibility to hold the Government to account, by playing for time, by preferring to wait until things look better for them in the polls despite the enduring suffering and public policy failures they see all around them.
And they rub salt into the wound by pretending to be acting in the national interest.
IT’S hard to avoid the conclusion that deputies of all colours have been playing fast and loose with strict voting requirements in the Dáil. It’s obvious that they’ve been playing us all for fools. They’ve developed an ingrained carelessness for the people they are there to serve, a conceit veering into contempt. But, there’s no cloud that doesn’t have a silver lining.
At page 37 of Peter Finnegan’s report comes the suggestion that a review of the voting system should be conducted, ‘drawing on best practice from across parliamentary systems’, with a report to be completed by the end of next March.
Now that’s a tasty proposal, if ever there was one, enough to have the boys and girls in the Dáil and Seanad licking their chops with excitement: junkets here, there and everywhere.
Do they wonder how they do their voting in Brazil, or New Zealand, or… China? Well, maybe not China.