A shaky start, Simon, on quite a number of fronts
DESPITE the hype over the fact that Simon Harris has become the youngest Taoiseach in the history of the State, it was all a bit of an anticlimax when he announced his new team.
He had promised a reset, a renewal, and reconnection, with a new-look Fine Gael. In the end, his first stab at Cabinet formation was conservative in the extreme.
He certainly didn’t take the advice of his immediate predecessor, Leo Varadkar, who said that his biggest regret, looking back at his time in the highest office of the land, was that he tended to be too cautious.
In effect, Harris merely filled the two spots he had available to him. He chose two male junior ministers, Peter Burke, and Patrick O’Donovan, to step up. There was much disappointment that he did not promote a woman to the Cabinet. Especially out in the leafy suburbs of Dún Laoghaire, where Jennifer Carroll MacNeill had been expected to be promoted.
Photographs
She must have been very disappointed, as it had been widely touted that, given her very effective media performances on behalf of Fine Gael, she was a shoo-in. Indeed, most observers initially thought she had made the cut because she walked into the Dáil chamber along with the new Cabinet.
Alas for her, it was not to be. It must have hurt that she wasn’t even part of the trip out to the Áras for the presentation of ministerial seals and for the photographs with the President.
Sources close to Simon Harris, before the reshuffle, were saying that whoever was due to get Minister of State for EU Affairs would be getting it because their existing position wasn’t the best use of their talents.
Indeed, I even saw it suggested by Government sources that becoming the EU Affairs junior minister was a necessary and final step for a TD to become a Cabinet minister.
Well, that’s news to me and, I’d say, a lot of other people who are political practitioners.
While Ms MacNeill got the EU gig, I’d say she’s still smarting at being overlooked for a Cabinet seat. Like many before her, she has learned the lesson in politics that being available at the drop of a hat, to go out and bat for her party, doesn’t necessarily guarantee ministerial preferment.
Geography, quite often, can be a much more crucial factor when it comes to the handing out of ministerial jobs. It seems that was the case in Harris’s choices.
Disappointments didn’t end there. Many in the Fine Gael ranks were bemused that Justice Minister Helen McEntee wasn’t pushed sideways. No one really expected her to be dropped from Cabinet, but it was widely felt that, in order to try to regain FG’s much tarnished record on law and order, there needed to be a fresh face in Justice.
Fine Gael party sources claimed McEntee was retained as Minister for Justice because removing her would have played into the hands of Sinn Féin, which called a no-confidence vote in her – something which the Government roundly defeated.
To my mind, that’s a pretty lame excuse. It is undoubtedly the case that, whether on issues such as crime, immigration or road safety, there needs to be a dramatic refreshment of policy, and more particularly, action throughout these areas.
It would have been smart politics to put a new face in the Department of Justice, someone who would not be tainted with some of the recent crises that have troubled that particular portfolio.
The controversies surrounding Harris’s reshuffle kept coming.
FG TDs were gobsmacked when it transpired that Harris, in effect, gifted the Gaeltacht ministry to Fianna Fáil. Apparently, the Cabinet memo circulated to ministers said that Galway West FG TD Hildegarde Naughton would be made Gaeltacht Minister.
But for some reason, Taoiseach Harris, at the last minute and without informing some of his own people, decided to give the job to FF’s Sports Minister, Thomas Byrne, who couldn’t conceal his glee at being given such a high-profile and important responsibility. It’s being said Harris couldn’t get anyone in the FG ranks who is capable enough in Irish to take the post. I don’t believe that. Surely in the FG back benches, if not the existing junior ministerial ranks, there is someone who has the cúpla focal? Indeed, it’s said that Ms Naughton is a Gaeilgeoir, a former primary school teacher whose constituency includes the Connemara Gaeltacht. One wonders why she did not take it. You can assume that FG supporters who have a grá for our language must be apoplectic at their party’s apparent lack of interest in the Gaeltacht.
The Taoiseach’s office maintains that he made this choice so as to house the Gaeltacht ministry back in its parent department (the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, and Sport). I’d say that reasoning will not placate FG supporters.
I began to wonder if Harris had ceded the Gaeltacht ministry to Fianna Fáil to soften up Micheál Martin, in the hope that the FF leader might relent and let Mairéad McGuinness stay on as EU Commissioner. Unlikely.
If Martin were to do that, there would be open warfare in FF. All in all, the Gaeltacht mess was a big own goal by Harris.
Bauble
It didn’t stop there. Now we learn that Harris tried and failed to coax several FG TDs who are planning to retire to change their minds by offering them the bauble of a junior ministry.
Pretty unedifying, if you ask me. That wily old political fox, Michael Ring, who publicly made no bones about the fact that he had declined two separate junior ministries, said he turned down the offers as ‘neither involved any spending power’.
No need for any further commentary about how seasoned campaigners, such as Ring, feel about being a junior minister. While he wasn’t previously in the ranks of FG’s declared retirees, you can certainly add his name to the list of 11 FG TDs not contesting the next election.
By all accounts, declared retirees Brendan Griffin and Fergus O’Dowd, when offered a junior ministry by Harris, were not for turning.
To compound all that toing and froing, Harris made the cardinal political error of being absent from the Dáil on the first day after his election as Taoiseach.
The excuse given for his noshow was that he had to take phone calls, presumably of congratulations, from Ukrainian president Zelensky, UK prime minister Sunak, and the first ministers of the Northern Executive. Again, a lame excuse.
Surely, those calls could have been taken late into the evening. Indeed, if the shoe had been on the other foot, especially in the case of Mr Sunak, the others would have insisted that their attendance in their own parliaments must take precedence over a phone call with another head of state.
It was not a good look, especially given that the Taoiseach apparently had plenty of time on that day to post a few TikTok videos for his followers .
‘Tús maith leath na hoibre’ is a great Irish seanfhocal meaning a good start is half the work.
At the start, the new Taoiseach, Simon Harris, exhorted his new Government by saying ‘let’s get to work’.
It has to be said that his initial attempt at working for us all could have been a lot better.