A crisis is met with lies and obfuscation

IT HAS been a catastrophic week for the Government. First, Monday’s RTÉ Investigates programme, Living On The List, revealed the true number of patients in limbo is 632,000, not 545,000.

On Wednesday, HP Inc announced the closure of its Leixlip plant with the loss of 500 jobs. On Thursday, Enda Kenny met Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who refused to acknowledge Ireland’s case for special treatment by the EU in the Brexit negotiations.

Then, that night on RTÉ’s Prime Time, it was revealed that allegations of child abuse had been circulated about Garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe, based on false information.

There are two deeply troubling interpretations of this: a counsellor mistakenly copied and pasted explicit details into a file on Garda McCabe for Tusla, the child protection agency, in an exercise of gross negligence and carelessness. The alternative is that it forms part of a concerted smear campaign to blacken the whistleblower’s name.

One of our most revered institutions, An Garda Síochána, is taking a battering, and the Commissioner seems to be sucked into every controversy that emerges.

Then we learned Minister for Children Katherine Zappone sat in Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting when the latest inquiry into the handling of the McCabe controversy was being discussed and never mentioned that she was aware of further, more grevious allegations, coming down the line. Then on Thursday, hours before Prime Time aired, she flew to the US.

Why did the Taoiseach and Justice Minister, who knew Ms Zappone met with Sgt McCabe, not ask for an update from her? If you don’t ask hard questions, you don’t risk getting difficult answers.

The nation is convulsed in crises. Where we need truth, we get lies and obfuscation. Our political class is paralysed by cowardice: Fine Gael’s confidence-and-supply partners Fianna Fáil will not risk the nation’s wrath by triggering a general election. The longer Fine Gael trundles on, the stronger Fianna Fáil becomes.

The uncertainty of the past week is dispiriting but one thing is sure: we are buffeted by the ill winds of Brexit and Trump, storms that will ignore the dissembling of our political establishment.