SCANDAL LEAVES TAOISEACH PERILOUSLY EXPOSED AND THE COALITION VULNERABLE

A once solid-looking Government is now vulnerable

EVEN if the former justice minister Dermot Ahern had not been namechecked in the Guerin Report for his lethargy in dealing with concerns raised by whistleblower Maurice McCabe, we might still be talking about him this weekend.

He and his cabinet colleague Noel Dempsey became a symbol of the anarchy and chaos that reigned in the dying days of the last government when they breezily announced that there was no question of a government bailout – even as Ajai Chopra and his colleagues in the Troika were printing out their boarding passes for their first trip to Dublin.

Mr Ahern was, understandably, furious at the way he had been hung out to dry by Brian Cowen. He opted not to run in the 2011 general election and was enjoying his anonymity until being briefly restored to the public consciousness by Seán Guerin.

Last week, Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore became the Dermot Ahern of the current Government, a hapless patsy sent out by the Taoiseach to deny the undeniable, to explain how, if you looked at it in a certain light, and with an open mind, black was actually white.

Alan Shatter would not be resigning, the Tánaiste assured the nation on Wednesday, even as Enda Kenny was rubbing his justice minister’s nose in the Guerin report, like an impatient dog-owner disciplining a mutt who had just soiled the living room.

For Mr Shatter to be declared a law-breaker by the data protection commissioner on Tuesday was bad, but to be outed as incompetent on Wednesday was a bridge too far. After months of protecting his loyal justice minister against concerns raised by ministers, TDs and members of the public on the doorsteps, Enda Kenny decided that Mr Shatter had to go. The problem for the Government was that nobody told Eamon Gilmore.

It’s a big problem. It’s only a few weeks since Mr Kenny dispatched the secretary general of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell to suggest to garda commissioner Martin Callinan that it might be a nice day to fall on his sword. Mr Callinan duly obliged.

A reading of the Guerin report suggests Mr Kenny’s instinct that the commissioner’s position was untenable was spot on but, as he would do again a few weeks later, he kept Mr Gilmore in the dark. To disrespect his Tánaiste once might be regarded as unfortunate; to do it twice seems like an unnecessary provocation, which Eamon Gilmore, if he is to retain any credibility, cannot ignore.

MR GILMORE is a proud man, whose interesting political journey has taken him from the more articulate salons of the far left in the 1970s to being, as he is today, a pragmatic cheerleader for austerity. He has made his excuses for his latest political manifestation on several occasions – he inherited the Troika from Fianna Fáil and his hands were tied – and he may well be betting that history will show him a lot more respect than he is currently receiving from the electorate.

A key grievance for him, however, is that he is not receiving anything like the kind of respect he should from the Taoiseach. While the Fine Gael vote has remained reasonably steady over the last three years, Labour has attracted most of the public venom for the effects of austerity. Labour ministers, against their better judgement, and with the words sticking in their craw, have defended polices that have caused untold misery for the people who voted for them.

For the most part, Mr Gilmore has done a good job in keeping jittery backbenchers on side, the occasional defection to political oblivion notwithstanding. The very least he is entitled to expect, therefore, is that if the Taoiseach had decided that the garda commissioner should go, and if he had decided that the minister for justice also might benefit from spending more time with his family, he should have kept his Coalition partners in the loop, so that the Tánaiste would not become the Comical Ali of Irish politics, as he was described yesterday by former Fine Gael minister Ivan Yates.

What Fine Gael TDs trumpet as Enda Kenny’s strength and decisiveness in dumping Alan Shatter might more accurately be described as an indication that the Taoiseach’s famed political antennae could do with a new battery.

Mr Kenny has left himself dangerously exposed and he has nobody but himself to blame. Either because he believes that Eamon Gilmore doesn’t have the stomach for a fight or because he is betting that Labour’s low poll ratings (and the party’s almost certain humiliation in the May 23 elections) will keep them in Government until the very end, he has ensured that relations between the Coalition parties are at their worst level since the Government was formed

Where once it looked like FG and Labour would cling tightly to each other until February 2016, it is now possible to envisage a scenario where we might be voting in a general election a long time before that.

A disastrous result for Labour in a few weeks will, without huge efforts to repair relations between the two Government parties, bring that day forward. Backbenchers and ministers, worried about their seats, might well conclude that remaining placidly in Government with a Taoiseach who seems to regard them as a necessary evil is a mug’s game. A government party that feels it has nothing left to lose is a dangerous beast. And the taoiseach who allows them to feel like that can be safely said to have lost his authority.

IN the short term, therefore, the Tánaiste will come under pressure from his backbenchers to be a lot less passive than he has been, less blasé about allowing Fine Gael to take whatever credit is going while Labour fends off the abuse. That will mean Labour being kept in the loop about any more whistleblowing resignations or sackings and it will mean allowing them to extract some political advantage from the Guerin report.

The inevitable Garda authority, which new Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald tried to make her own the other day, is a Labour idea, and Garda whistleblowing legislation in the Protected Disclosures Bill is all Brendan Howlin’s work; perhaps the party should be a little more vocal about asserting ownership over these.

But, mostly, what Labour needs is a Taoiseach who respects it, and a Tánaiste who demands that respect, even if, ultimately, that might mean choosing a different Tánaiste.

Either way, a once solid-looking Government is suddenly vulnerable and a once assured Taoiseach is making the kind of basic errors you learn to avoid on your first day in leadership school. The era of post-Troika instability has begun.