The politics of getting things done are never that simple, Simon

IN MAY last year an enthusiastic Simon Coveney – who was looking to burnish his leadership credentials – asked Taoiseach Enda Kenny for the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Kenny granted him his wish.

Of his new job at the time, Coveney said: ‘The idea that I was given a poisoned chalice to cut me down to size would make sense if I hadn’t asked for it. Maybe it will damage me, maybe it won’t.

‘I don’t intend to be in politics for ever, but while I am, I want to take on issues that can change people’s lives.’

A year later, overwhelmed by the scale of the housing crisis and bruised from his divisive leadership battle with arch-rival Leo Varadkar, Coveney walked away.

At the Department of Housing he had indeed changed people’s lives. For the worse.

This summer, Coveney was again given his choice of departments, this time from new Taoiseach Varadkar. Coveney picked the Department of Foreign Affairs, the blue-chip posting that sees the incumbent feted in the capitals of the world. Last week, he was among his peers at the United Nations in New York as US President Donald Trump said that he would ‘totally destroy’ North Korea.

AT THE Oscar Niemeyer-designed Manhattan UN HQ, Ireland co-sponsored a silly treaty that bans nuclear weapons. The US, France and Britain, who actually have nuclear weapons, boycotted the treaty. Futile, yes, but far less futile than bickering with local authorities and builders.

Housing is now the new Department of Health, a graveyard for political careers. It is best left early before too much damage is done.

A Cabinet minister told me last week: ‘The problem with the Housing job is that it will take ten years to sort out the housing crisis.

‘You can throw as much money at it as you like but it will just take too long. Even at Health you can throw money at it to get waiting lists down.’

The callow Eoghan Murphy, 35, now becomes the fourth minister to hold the portfolio in three years. Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan left housing (then called the Department of Environment) in 2014 for the Commissioner’s job in Brussels. Alan Kelly left after his Labour party was decimated in last year’s general election.

When one assesses the rubble of 2016, when Fine Gael lost 26 seats and Labour lost 30, it is the events at this department that are deemed most responsible for the destruction of the coalition government. It also marshalled Irish Water. Irish Water was a massive political mistake, exacerbated by incompetence and stubbornness. But no one died, and no one became homeless.

Late in dark evenings of February last year, I would talk to candidates about how that day’s general election canvass had gone. They would tell me that housing was coming up, a lot. People were either affected by the lack of supply, their children were affected by it or they were embarrassed that a modern Western nation would allow it to happen.

Fine Gael didn’t see it coming: tax cuts for the middle classes was the party’s main aim.

The role of two Fine Gael-led governments in the housing crisis has been an abdication of civic responsibility that will damage the party for years to come. The reputational damage for the party could be as great as that done to Fianna Fáil by the financial crash.

Few politicians escape without blame. Fianna Fáil’s economic crash created the conditions for the housing crisis to arise. But it was Fine Gael’s elitism and detachment from the concerns of ordinary people that have allowed it to grow. When Fine Gael entered power in 2011 they set about putting in order the ruined Government apparatus they had been left by the Fianna Fáil-Green government.

And the Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan team initially did a good job. However, it had already been decided by the establishment media that Fianna Fáil, the banks and developers had caused the crash. Not only was this simplistic but it suited Fine Gael politically.

IT BECAME impossible for developers to build houses. It was reasoned the banks couldn’t then give them reckless loans.

The flaw in the plan was that the Government didn’t step in to build houses.

Fine Gael has had seven years to confront this disgraceful housing crisis, where a modern, Western state with a fast-growing economy can’t provide shelter for its people.

It will be Enda Kenny’s legacy and it could be Leo Varadkar’s.

The Budget and Varadkar’s actions before Christmas will reveal whether he has the stomach to turn it around quickly.

The as-yet sketchy plan to allow Nama engage in providing housing is an innovative start – but there are a lot of questions, and there is a lot of lost trust. The alternatives are almost as bad. If Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin can produce credible resolutions, one of them could be the largest party in the next Dáil.

So having left the country a legacy of homelessness, Kenny retires to his family home in Lightford, Castlebar. According to his Dáil Register of Interests, he also owns two other apartments, one on Fenian Street, near the Dáil. He has six acres of farmland too.

Taoiseach Varadkar doesn’t declare anything, though he has allowed TV cameras into a small house he owns in his Dublin West constituency.

But for some reason, it is Coveney’s piety when he took the job that my mind returns to.

As his leadership campaign crumbled around him he made a last desperate effort to portray himself as an ordinary bloke. This would have been quite an image makeover as his substantial wealth requires both a private wealth manager and something called the Coveney Family Investment Club.

He invited a journalist into his sprawling farmhouse in Co. Cork, where dogs Coco and Alf gambolled on the verdant lawns.

His wife bravely tried to help, denying Simon was boring.

‘We live life at 110 miles per hour – we do things in a day that would be perfect to do over the space of four weeks. Once we went to a concert, the races and a wedding in one day – in two different countries.’

Hardly an anecdote the man, woman and child in the street could relate to.