Death by a thousand cuts: the FF strategy to take ministerial scalps
Harris will be left in place as Micheal Martin seeks to capitalise on children’s hospital controversy,
THE Chinese called it lingchi — which roughly translates as ‘lingering death’ or ‘death by a thousand cuts’. The barbaric execution method saw victims tortured with small incisions for hours or sometimes days until they finally died. It was eventually outlawed, but not until 1904.
Fianna Fail plans to use a similar technique to end the Cabinet career of Health Minister Simon Harris. It should be noted from the off, there will be no violence or at least there is none planned. The strategy is to swap knife wounds for something even more deadly in political life — the slow and deliberate drip feed of information during a controversy.
As one frontbench Fianna Fail TD said: “Politically speaking, a slow, painful death is far better than a quick one.” The aim is to keep Harris and the world’s most expensive children’s hospital in the headlines for as long as possible.
The attitude in the senior ranks of the party is ‘why rush him out of the door when he’s doing a better job of damaging Fine Gael than Fianna Fail can do themselves?’
Sinn Fein can table all the motions it likes. Fianna Fail has other plans. The death by a thousand cuts strategy may have been at its most painful for Harris last week, but there will be more in the coming days. The minister’s pain threshold will be more resilient but he knows he’s being injured.
And more worryingly for Fine Gael, its beloved Prince of Prudence, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, may be next in line.
Fianna Fail does not plan to show any mercy in this regard. With local and European elections fast approaching, the party needs to take the gloss off Fine Gael’s ‘more economically holier than thou’ image. Once the children’s hospital fiasco recedes, the party will once again focus on the national broadband plan which has dropped out of the spotlight since Denis Naughten stepped down as Communications Minister.
Fianna Fail learnt from Naughten’s resignation that once a head rolls everybody moves on and the detail of the controversy is never fully scrutinised. In many ways, a resignation serves the Government rather than the Opposition.
It looks as if it has taken charge of a situation and found a resolution when in reality all it has done is distracted from the central issue that caused the problem in the first place.
For now, Fianna Fail will continue to demand additional information and clarification on the hospital project. Departments will be flooded with Freedom of Information requests and parliamentary questions.
Each response will be heralded as yet more evidence of Fine Gael’s gross incompetence. Harris and Donohoe will be dragged before Oireachtas committees and Dail debates to answer for their actions or lack thereof.
The political system can be ground to halt by the Opposition’s constant probing of Government. Last week, Harris had to sit through two days of committee hearings on the hospital project and another Dail debate on the Cervical Check scandal.
A lot of time and preparation goes into these appearances, time which could be spent ensuring a department is being run proficiently.
It should be mentioned that Labour Party health spokesperson Alan Kelly has done a lot of the heavy lifting on this one. He doesn’t always get everything right, but he knows where to look for bodies.
They don’t like to admit it, but Fianna Failers get themselves awfully upset when Fine Gaelers question their capability to manage the economy, even though you’d think Fianna Failers would at this point be able to suck that one up.
The recent Fine Gael stunt of producing figures for the demands Fianna Fail looked for over the past year got under their skin. The final figure was around €3.5bn but how robustly it was calculated is debatable.
Fianna Fail wants revenge, and Harris and Donohoe have provided them with an open goal. The Fine Gael ministers almost gave themselves repetitive strain injuries from patting each other on the back for their balanced budget last year.
But that image is now unravelling with each public pronouncement on the children’s hospital. It should be also noted that there is nothing particularly shocking about the cost of State infrastructure work soaring above the originally projected figure.
We are desensitised to that carry-on, but that’s not the issue here. The problem with this particular political schmozzle is that Fine Gael seems all at sea when it comes to basic maths.
Donohoe’s ‘steady hand on the tiller’ image is severely damaged by the fact he didn’t seem to know there was a potential €400m bill in the Department of Health in August when he was doing his Budget arithmetic.
Now Harris was not a lot of help in this regard. The Health Minister didn’t cough up much information when he first learnt about the overrun.
His officials did try to raise it with their Department of Public Expenditure and Reform counterparts, to no avail. But it’s not fair to blame officials. It is fair, however, to question the relationship between officials and their minister.
On November 4, last year, the Sunday Independent reported that Simon Harris was “at war” with officials as “the worst ever trolley crisis” loomed.
Based on information from well-placed sources, the newspaper reported that there was a “complete lack of trust” between highranking health officials and Harris due to the handling of the Cervical Check scandal.
The level of distrust between the minister and some of his officials was “quite palpable”, it was reported.
Five days after this report, senior health officials presented Harris with the €450m figure for the children’s hospital costs overrun. There is nothing to suggest any Department of Health official acted improperly during the current children’s hospital crisis.
In fact, the documents released last week showed they diligently raised the issue with the Health Minister as they got the information. Officials also tried to contact the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
But you would wonder if there was a better relationship between the minister and his officials would he have been better prepared for the fallout of recent weeks. If there had been a better atmosphere in Miesian Plaza perhaps a senior official would have taken the time to tap the minister on the shoulder to highlight the fast-approaching capitalspending meteor heading his way.
Departmental briefings and memos can clog up even the most efficient of ministerial in-trays. An invaluable asset to a minister is a savvy civil servant who’ll point out potential dangers. The Cervical Check scandal did nothing for ministerial/civil service relations and that could very well have been to Harris’s detriment in this case.
That is if we are dismissing the quite plausible theory that Fine Gael was happy for the costs of the hospital to remain buried in ministerial memos and board meeting minutes until it was sure an election would not be called. Alan Kelly first posed this theory and Fianna Fail jumped on board in recent days.
It would explain why Fianna Fail was not informed of the overrun during Budget negotiations or confidence and supply review talks. Fianna Fail’s Budget negotiator, Barry Cowen, specifically asked Fine Gael for the capitalspending plans for next year but got nowhere.
This week we will learn what projects will be delayed to fill the €100m budget black hole and pay for children’s hospital overrun. Fianna Fail will undoubtedly be outraged by the cuts and the torture of Simon Harris will continue.
It will continue beyond the Brexit deadline in March and possibly all the way up to the local elections in May.
The Taoiseach recently said he had no plans for a Cabinet reshuffle after the local elections but at that point moving Harris would probably be just putting him out of his misery.
‘More urgent for Fine Gael, its beloved Prince of Prudence — Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe — may be next in line’