Ignore all the reform waffle: there’s zero hope of change
ALL politics is local. Yes, the phrase feels like a jaded maxim but it’s a good guiding principle to understanding what happened in the General Election. Last December, I had a drink with a few men and women from the local Fianna Fáil organisation in Rush, Co. Dublin.
‘James Reilly, surely, as a sitting cabinet minister, has to be re-elected?’ I asked of one of my drinking companions. He said: ‘No.’ He believed his running mate and fellow sitting Fine Gael TD, the lower-profile Alan Farrell from Malahide, would be re-elected.
‘Mark my words, if either of them is to lose their seat it will be Reilly,’ he said.
In the Harbour Bar that night (they avoided the nearby Michael Collins pub, for obvious reasons) the Fianna Fáil man said that back in 2011, he’d noticed Mr Farrell, within days of being elected as a first-time TD, attending small meetings in rural areas such as Garristown and the Naul.
If there were three men gathered at a crossroads to discuss an issue in the heart of rural north county Dublin (for those of you who don’t know the area, there is a lot of countryside up there), Mr Farrell would be there.
And he worked the towns of Swords, Malahide and Skerries too. Like Enda Kenny, Mr Farrell lacks charisma or oily charm. But he understands politics. It has been said here that James Reilly doesn’t understand politics. A former GP and latecomer to the national arena, Dr Reilly was rapidly over promoted, principally because he was the only senior Dublin Fine Gael TD to back Enda Kenny in the 2010 heave. He blundered into the Department of Health in 2011. In the midst of a financial crisis he decided he was going to abolish the HSE. He also thought the time was right for introducing universal health care. The HSE is still there. UHC is out. Dr Reilly couldn’t handle his budgets; he couldn’t handle the low dealings in high politics and was blamed for budget overruns. He didn’t understand that ‘reform’, especially in the health service, needs lots and lots of money. He was bombarded with negative publicity and was eventually demoted in the 2014 reshuffle. And over all that time Mr Farrell was tramping the backroads of Dublin Fingal, helping his constituents. In February 2016, Alan Farrell was re-elected and James Reilly lost his seat.
Since the inconclusive general election result, no combination of parties can agree to form a government. But they all agree on one thing, in broadcasting studios at least, we need reform of Irish politics. Commentators, the type you’d rarely see at party meetings in rural pubs, back these intangible reform proposals.
While backing reform they sneeringly refer to yokel TDs who ‘sort out medical cards, planning permissions and school places’.
But the Dáil is full of Alan Farrells. They learned from Fianna Fáil that politics is about getting into power, staying there and returning there. Politics in Ireland was and is about
getting elected and re-elected. And if the means to do this is helping people who can’t always help themselves it is not necessarily a bad thing.
So, rather than all these new independents being a new political class, they’re actually oldstagers doing the old job under a new livery.
Danny Healy-Rae is 61. His young buck of a brother Michael is 49. Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran, who was elected for Longford-Westmeath, is 48. The Healy-Raes are independents because their father, the late Jackie, was rejected for the Fianna Fáil ticket in South Kerry in 1997. Mr Moran couldn’t get past the O’Rourke Fianna Fáil machine in Westmeath and he also left.
Of course, local government should be doing a lot of what the Healy-Raes and Boxer excel at but all attempts at the reform of local government have failed. Former environment minister Phil Hogan promised reform but nothing happened, bar the abolition of town councils.
We didn’t get powerful city mayors, so TDs do that work. And who legislates? The cabinet, because rest are whipped into line and told what to do. And when that authority is removed you get the scenes of chaos we saw in the Dáil this week, with Sinn Féin TDs taking hours to make meaningless speeches about water charges.
If Enda Kenny goes on to form a minority government, expect much more of that before it all collapses in disarray. This week in Leinster House, I sensed deep unease.
As an emboldened Sinn Féin caused mayhem in the Dáil chamber, Fianna Fáil, the reform promoters-in-chief, realised that things were not going well.
Of all parties, Fianna Fáilers should have known politicians can’t change. Micheál Martin’s promotion of reform and a new political path was going nowhere.
It seemed to dawn on Fianna Fáil TDs that Enda Kenny’s threat of a second general election was perhaps the only tangible suggestion we have heard since the election.
When the political pragmatists have exhausted all the bluster about new politics, watch them forge an arrangement that will stave off a general election for a few years.