Curse of living in a bubble

TDs believe their own spin and forget the people are watching

THE dysfunction at the heart of this particular Cabinet Government was laid bare for all to see by the extraordinary events of the past week. It was as unedifying a sight as has been witnessed in Irish politics since the farcical scenes that led to the ousting of Brian Cowen as leader of Fianna Fáil and as taoiseach in early 2011.

Cowen was a good man who, having been a TD for more than 25 years, lost sight of what politics and public service is supposed to be about. Insulated in the bubble of Leinster House he cut a lonely, delusional figure as he frantically tried to keep his administration in place when the bankrupt country he was leading had patently had enough of him and his government.

Now, six years on, similar scenes unfold. Taoiseach Enda Kenny is also a good man. He has done the State some considerable service. History will, I suspect, be relatively kind to him given the sterling work his Fine Gael-Labour coalition did in restoring this State’s sovereignty after the Troika came to rule these shores in 2010.

But Kenny has been in the Dáil for more than 40 years and inhabits the same bubble Cowen once did – and the results are destined to be eerily familiar.

Taoisigh are surrounded by well-paid political and civil service advisers and yet are prone to doing the most amazingly idiotic things. In Cowen’s case, he seemed to think it a good idea to replace almost half his cabinet in January 2011 without telling his coalition partners, the hapless Greens.

Last Sunday lunchtime, Kenny, facing the turmoil of the Maurice McCabe story which had dominated the news cycle since Thursday night’s explosive Prime Time programme on RTÉ, went live on radio and stated he had had a conversation with Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone before a meeting she had with Sergeant Maurice McCabe just two weeks earlier.

IT TRANSPIRED this conversation did not happen. Astoundingly the Taoiseach, unprompted, went on to embellish this fairy tale by declaring: ‘I said to her, “Well, if you do have a meeting, make sure that you have a thorough account of it.”’ It was as if the Taoiseach didn’t realise he was live on radio speaking to thousands of listeners and that his voice would be recorded in posterity for ever more. Given the dominance the McCabe story had in the public consciousness and the argument that the Taoiseach had ample time and resources to prepare for this interview, the phrase ‘What was he thinking?’ springs to mind.

After the horror imposed on Sgt McCabe and his family by agencies of the State, it was incumbent on Kenny to use this interview to assure the public the Government he led was determined to get to the bottom of this sordid case, which had all but ruined the life of a true servant of the State, Sgt McCabe. Yet the country’s most powerful State servant, the Taoiseach, not only obfuscated but quoted lines from a conversation that never happened at all.

Think about that. Our country’s leader was exposed as a man who made up a conversation with a minister that never happened over an issue of extraordinary importance relating to the powers of the State to destroy a man’s life with vile and baseless allegations.

That minister, Katherine Zappone, rather bizarrely blamed differing time zones for producing wildly contradictory statements about whom she told of her meeting with Sgt McCabe. That she did not tell the Taoiseach, the leader of our Cabinet, about her meeting with Mr McCabe in itself speaks volumes for what does or doesn’t go on in government. That the Taoiseach said Zappone was speaking to the McCabes in a private capacity is even more mind-boggling. Ministers simply cannot engage in matters of State in a private capacity. Meanwhile, their Government colleagues, the Independent Alliance, announced they would be asking ‘hard questions’ at Cabinet about the affair. In return for their machismo and ultimate loyalty, the brave pair of Shane Ross and Finian McGrath revealed they had secured an independent review of the Garda. But, of course, there is already an independent overview body for the Garda, the Garda Inspectorate. As the journalist Michael Clifford, as stern a critic of policing as there is in this country, noted, it is doing an excellent job. Still if this salves the conscience of the Cabinet’s ultimate donothing man, Shane Ross, then we should perhaps all be grateful. This is the Leinster House bubble – where politicians act as if nobody beyond the media are paying any attention to them. A place where the Taoiseach can offer two different versions of interactions with a minister about the shameful allegations against Sgt McCabe in the space of just 14 minutes. And both versions different again to the account he gave live on radio. This takes political hubris to a whole new level. Citizens take notice of this kind of carry-on. There is a delusional streak running through the Taoiseach’s supporters, from Michael Ring in Mayo to European Affairs Minister Dara Murphy in Cork, that Mr Kenny should stay on for months to face the challenges of government, particularly Brexit.

This makes no sense – and the delusion sadly extends to the Taoiseach too.

The narrative that Mr Kenny, self-appointed Brexit minister, is best placed to handle the negotiations due to his special standing among his EU counterparts is one he has spun himself. There is no tangible evidence that the Irish State has gained any special European deals by having him as Taoiseach. It was much the same with Bertie Ahern, who also spun a story about how he was viewed as indispensable by his EU counterparts.

There are no special relationships among EU leaders. They are the ultimate ruthless pragmatists and will deal with whoever they are faced with.

It is simply the nature of politics. That nature extends to leaders outstaying their welcome. In these pages last December, I argued that Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar had a patriotic duty to go to Kenny after Christmas and tell him his time as leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach was up.

Advocating that the stakes were too serious for the Government to limp along doing nothing given the brewing Brexit tsunami, I also suggested the new leader should call an immediate general election and seek a new mandate.

After the farcical scenes of the last 10 days, it is clear this Government of dysfunction has ceased to work. Our country needs a radical reboot. That can happen only when Fine Gael gets a new leader. The fates of country and party have aligned and it is time for those in Fine Gael to put the country first.