A Taoiseach besotted by sham and illusion

LEO Varadkar has been found out. Leo may believe he’s a smart sophisticate but he is ultimately anti-intellectual. How else can one describe somebody who personally, or by his Government, trotted out one undeliverable promise after another on the cervical cancer scandal.

Leo Varadkar’s leadership qualities have been exposed as virtually non-existent. Sadly, what he lacks in that department has been substituted by pure fantasy.

He insinuated his way into the highest political office in the land by ticking all the boxes.

He’s young and very well educated, fashionably liberal and modern in his outlook; he’s accessible and outspoken with a cultivated air of frankness.

Leo looks international and behaves like a cultured cosmopolitan is supposed to. His physical fitness, poise and sexuality speaks to an image of Ireland which is now attracting more and more admirers. He tops all that by his trendy embrace of social media.

That’s where life is perfect, where everybody looks sublime, where reality is denied and, as a corollary, where illusion and pure fabrication is de rigueur.

The ridiculous promises made by Leo Varadkar to the women profoundly hurt in mind and body by the cervical smear test scandal – and to the families of the women killed by the negligence of the State and other actors – are a stark example of the make-believe world of social media intersecting with reality.

In the real world outrages like the cervical cancer scandal have to be managed on a considered, step-bystep basis. Facts have to be gathered and timelines have to be teased out, double checked and confirmed. Only after such analyses should one make decisions. Or make promises.

However, in social media utopia solutions can be conjured up on command. Instantaneously.

Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland, has behaved like we’re all subject to the principles and mores of social media perfection.

So – determined to create a world without blemish – he endorsed a Government promise that a review of around 3,000 smear tests would be conducted by the end of May. As of now, they haven’t even begun.

And then he went further by promising that women who felt entitled to financial compensation arising from the smear test scandal would not have to endure the processing of their cases through the courts. He said that cases could be settled by the State – with the costs picked up later from others involved, such as the laboratories that conducted the testing.

See, problem solved. That’s the way things happen in Leo’s world.

Tragically, it was nothing but a phoney daydream, a self-induced reverie by a political leader who must or should have known better.

Access to the courts is a constitutional right that even Taoiseach Leo Varadkar cannot set aside. That right applies to the women taking these cases but, more particularly, also applies to the laboratories contracted to carry out the smear tests and who wish to defend their work.

Further, the Taoiseach must have been advised that, notwithstanding the terrible damage done to hundreds of women by misreadings of their smear tests, it does not follow automatically that either the State or the laboratories were guilty of negligence.

Negligence can be established in two principal ways: by defendants admitting to it in negotiations or by a finding to that effect in a court of law.

By ruling out the court process, the Taoiseach was, in effect, declaring that all and every negligence claim arising from this scandal would be admitted.

The implications of that are staggering in breadth and depth. He undermined the notion of a State Claims Agency monitoring, managing and, where necessary, fighting claims made against the State which if won, or conceded, would end up with all of us, as citizens, picking up the tab.

In Leo’s world, handing over the State cheque book to all and every claimant, and inviting them to make their own arrangements about their preferred compensation (not to mention the legal costs), was the perfect solution. The centuries-old court process where claims are established in public view was to be abandoned, irrespective of the potential cost, because its harshness and inconvenience could not be reconciled to the more pleasant demands of social media.

All this is the product of a man of little depth. Deliberation is not something he’s guilty of.

Stephen Teap, whose wife Irene lost her life to cervical cancer, was utterly devastating in his criticism of the Taoiseach this week.

‘Everything he is saying at the moment has no meaning,’ he said.

And that’s precisely it. Our Taoiseach is so enamoured by the need to be loved that he’s besotted by sham and illusion and words without substance.

And, in the real world where the rest of us live, that’s scary.