Unsolicited advice, yes, but McEntee and Harris can heed it or watch FG sink

I’m a firm believer in offering unsolicited advice to powerful people. That way, the resentful recipient can never say they weren’t told. Simon Harris buckled his first big decision and let Helen McEntee stay on as justice minister. Fair enough. I took no pleasure in criticising a fellow Meath woman from the idolised McEntee tribe, but if McEntee wants to be as successful in the performance of her job as she was in the keeping of it, here’s one thing she could try.

I bumped into a male TD a couple of weeks ago who had been reading with some disbelief my accounts of the intimidating atmosphere in Dublin city centre. Normally, he drives to the Dáil, but recently had occasion to take a train journey.

Arriving in Heuston Station, he waited for a Luas into town and was confronted by the reality of the public realm outside the more sedate environment south of College Green.

He was genuinely shocked by the number of drug addicts and lost souls pacing, fighting and begging around the concourse. On the Luas, he quickly realised how to behave as the rest of us do. Most passengers are friendly and kind, but one remains alert to the edgy, strung-out characters whose mood might flip from anguish to aggression in a second. I know the addicts are more of a threat to themselves than to us, but constant vigilance is prudent.

“Is it like this all the time?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Since Covid.”

He confessed he had been told by women who work in and around O’Connell Street that they don’t go out for lunch any more and in the evening they leave in groups, ensuring no one is standing at a bus stop alone. But he didn’t really believe it until he saw it.

So I recommend that Minister “Dublin is safe” McEntee ties her hair up into a woolly hat, ditches the pretty corporate dress and dons jeans and runners. Then try for a few days to get to the office using public transport and find out what life is really like for those of us without a driver and free city-centre parking.

I don’t begrudge ministerial perks, because safe and reliable travel is essential to the performance and dignity of the office. I think ministers should fly business class. But if McEntee temporarily walked in our shoes, she would understand why I go completely berserk every time she says, even as a tram burns in the background, that “Dublin is safe”.

Prisons can’t be built in a day, but in a day McEntee could educate herself about the lives of regular women. The Dublin riots would happen again tomorrow, given the right trigger. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t get out enough.

Apparently, McEntee owes her rescue to Frances Fitzgerald. Given the trauma Frances experienced when unfairly forced to resign as justice minister over outlandish and later disproved allegations, I understand why she would work to save Helen from a similar, if quite distinct, fate.

A few weeks ago, I speculated that while Fitzgerald – whom I admire very much – was retiring from the European Parliament, she clearly has ambitions for the Áras, speculation she pointedly hasn’t ruled out.

Then last week a most interesting thing happened. At the Fine Gael ard fheis in Galway, who was given the high-profile job of introducing new leader Simon Harris? Mairead McGuinness.

Well, now. As an EU commissioner, it may not have been entirely appropriate for McGuinness to participate in such a political event, though as her term is shortly to expire, it’s not a particularly big deal.

Far more interesting is why she did it and why she has been attending other Fine Gael events like the European Parliament conventions.

Like Fitzgerald, she’s superstar Fine Gael talent and doesn’t look like a woman intending to garden once her term expires.

McGuinness put herself forward once before for the Fine Gael nomination for the presidency, losing out to Gay Mitchell. That election ended in such humiliation that it frightened the party out of competing for the presidency ever since.

If McGuinness and Fitzgerald – each excellent candidates – want a presidential nomination, that would be some dogfight.

So here’s more unsolicited advice for the new Taoiseach. Tell McGuinness and Fitzgerald that if they want any jobs from Fine Gael, there’s one job they have to do first: run in the general election.

Fergus O’Dowd is not running again in Louth, and Leo Varadkar won’t run in Dublin West.

Louth is McGuinness territory and Fitzgerald was previously a TD in Dublin Mid-West, next door to Varadkar’s soon-to-be-vacant constituency.

No doubt there are ambitious contenders in each constituency who had hoped for elevation, like senator Emer Currie in Dublin West.

But this is no time for tears. Only seats count now, and McGuinness and Fitzgerald are bankable.

And let’s face it, talent is streaming out of Fine Gael. It needs front-bench stars.

Of course, if Fine Gael stays in government, it may end up refusing to nominate anyone for the presidency and back Micheál Martin, who is rumoured to have eyes on the top job.

Better again, because the party would have two highly experienced TDs ready to sit in the Cabinet.

It would also have two potential future leaders.

If the women run, Fine Gael can’t lose. Harris can’t afford to have talent like McGuinness and Fitzgerald go to waste.

If he does and Fine Gael loses those seats, well, he can’t say he wasn’t told.

‘The new Taoiseach should tell McGuinness and Fitzgerald that if they want any jobs from Fine Gael, there’s one job they have to do first: run in the general election’