An excellent man but right for this job?

LAST week, the Irish Mail On Sunday revealed that Senator Billy Lawless, one of the Taoiseach’s personal nominees to the Seanad, had once given a job to Enda Kenny’s daughter when she went to the US for a summer on a J-1 student visa.

In a very flattering feature on the Chicago-based publican in the Irish Times this week, Senator Lawless said he found the focus on this ‘petty’. That is his right, but let us be absolutely clear. Nowhere did we suggest that Mr Lawless’s appointment was a favour repaid. Indeed, we said quite the opposite, but very legitimately presented the fact that he employed Aoibhinn Kenny as an example of the close ties between him, Mr Kenny, and the wider Fine Gael organisation.

A failed FG candidate at the 1991 local elections, Senator Lawless has been a donor to the party, and the clear impression left by his appointment, along with those of former TDs who lost their seats in the February election, was that the ‘new’ politics we were promised once more had given way to jobs for the boys.

We also posed a serious question which has yet to be answered by Mr Lawless or by the Government. Who is going to pay for the flights when the new senator has to attend Seanad sessions?

Despite the fact that he is a successful businessman, it would be unrealistic to expect Mr Lawless to fund his own travel, so we can but assume the taxpayer once again will foot the bill. This expense arguably might be justified. After all, Mr Lawless has been a tireless worker for the undocumented Irish in the US, and his appointment was warmly welcomed by groups working with our emigrants. His experience of the Diaspora means, it is said, they will have a voice in Government.

This argument fails, though, on two fronts. We already have a Minister for the Diaspora, in the form of Joe McHugh. And, if Senator Lawless is such an effective advocate for the rights of the Irish in the US, surely the best place for him to be advocating is in Washington DC, not in a stuffy chamber in Dublin that is so moribund, the Taoiseach himself tried to get rid of it completely in 2013?

We are told the senator’s status will mean his voice will be heard by US politicians and that this will be vital if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election and tries to press ahead with immigration control and ending the J-1 visa scheme.

The same could easily have been achieved by granting Mr Lawless special diplomatic status and sending him to lobby on Capitol Hill.

So, at no point did we challenge Senator Lawless’s obvious effectiveness in keeping an eye out for the Irish in Chicago and beyond – and it is clear he is a man of empathy and compassion.

That is why, though, we also believe that he would be better placed to make a difference by remaining in his adopted country, rather than pointlessly making endless return flights to his native one.