LEO’S A COOL KID... IS THAT ALL THERE IS?
LEO VARADKAR strolled into the room with a crystal champagne flute in his hand. He was at an unglamorous party function at the Galway Bay Hotel, among TDs, senators, Fine Gael staff and journalists.
Nonchalant, dressed in new designer suit and shoes, when Varadkar is forced to do these beef-and-salmon events he always looks like he’d rather be somewhere else.
He views himself in a cinematic way. Varadkar began his visit to the West by swooping down on the Aran Islands in a military helicopter, like Arnold Schwarzenegger (another Hollywood star he also insisted on being photographed with earlier this year) taking a rebel fort in one of his shoot-em-up
He views himself in a cinematic way
movies. Predecessors Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny studiously avoided being photographed stepping out of helicopters because nothing blares excess like a chopper.
Absent from all this was any hint that he would leave the limousine, helicopter, hotel or cover of his entourage and security to meet an ordinary voter while in Galway city.
Yet walk down Salthill prom, you will meet homeless families, coming in and out of faded seaside hotels. As the rain swept across the rundown, out-ofseason resort I spoke to an Asian family – a woman with a headscarf around her three children. They were staying in emergency accommodation, which had a sign outside reading: ‘This hotel is closed to the public.’
Back at the Galway Bay Hotel, in interviews and press conferences the designer-suited Taoiseach robotically recited the same bland statistics and soothing words his Housing Minister uses to little avail in the face of the ever-expanding housing crisis.
Seven years into his Cabinet career, Mr Varadkar continues to insist there was no ‘quick fix’ to the housing crisis and the Government was ‘not giving up’ on addressing the huge demand for social and affordable housing.
Yet John Moran, the former Secretary General of the Department of Finance, recently reminded me that four-and-a-half years ago, when he was part of the Fine Gael-led administration, he warned that we needed to build lots of social housing.
In that same week, in March 2014, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned about housing shortages in Dublin.
Varadkar was part of that Fine Gael government and still they dissemble. When you talk privately to Fine Gael ministers and TDs at these social events,
you understand that they just don’t seem to care.
Not once in all his dissembling about housing did Varadkar speak of compassion about children having to rise in hotel rooms to get ready for school.
Varadkar just backed Housing Minister Murphy’s threat to use ‘emergency powers’ under the Housing Acts, to strip certain local authorities of their powers to provide emergency accommodation and transfer the responsibility to his department. Yet it’s exactly a year since I had a long conversation with Murphy where he primarily blamed the local authorities for the housing crisis. And he threatened to use those powers.
The latest homelessness figures show there are 9,891 people in emergency accommodation, 3,867 are children. A year ago there were 8,160, 2,973 were children.
They may claim progress but, on those figures, Varadkar’s Government is failing, shamefully.
The Fine Gael annual parliamentary party think-in, is a tired event with a dated format that throws politicians and journalists, who work all year in close proximity anyway, together in a hotel. The party’s bright sparks came up with a bonding session that included acting classes. The Taoiseach doesn’t need those classes – his act is already well-polished.
There was an in-crowd and an out-crowd. The most obviously excluded was Eoghan Murphy’s constituency colleague Kate O’Connell. Articulate, able and energetic she was not asked to participate in one press conference or online media event. She vocally opposed Varadkar in the leadership contest. But so did her male colleagues Simon Coveney and Simon Harris – and they have prospered.
His inner circle has grown since last year, when I noted that the new Taoiseach was accompanied by an unprecedented number of Government paid advisers at what used to be a cosy parliamentary party event. There were at least
Every time I looked at him he was texting
four Fine Gael press officers at this event but still, running skittishly here and there was the Government Press Secretary Nick Miller. And there, too, was the Deputy Government Press Secretary Sarah Meade. Varadkar’s jolly chief of staff Brian Murphy was also there. He is so much older and greyer looking than the rest of the entourage that in Europe, bureaucrats often hone in on him, rather than Varadkar, as the Taoiseach. Another senior adviser, John Carroll – a large bear of a man – loomed on the fringes. He isn’t very sociable and every time I looked at him he was furiously texting. And, of course, the bookish history professor Patrick Geoghegan, was ubiquitous. Ministers Helen McEntee and Eoghan Murphy similarly. There was a depressing dinner on Thursday night. I noticed that the tables with powerful or ‘in favour’ people had bottles of wine left at their tables. The journalists and Fine Gael staff had to plead with waiting staff for a tipple.
The Irish Daily Mail’s Political Editor Senan Molony gave a superb, gag-filled speech poking fun at the Taoiseach but there was deathly silence among the TDs and senators, afraid to be seen laughing at their self-regarding leader.
Varadkar tried a jokey speech and then attempted to segue into congratulating journalists on family events. He coldly listed births and marriages making it sound like an announcer reading out the death notices on local radio. Yet people will tell you they have worked with Varadkar in Leinster House for a decade and such family events pass without mention by the aloof leader.
Correctly, in Irish politics, there is a respect and reverence for the Taoiseach, and he sets the tone. Varadkar looks well and feigns to speak plainly.
Many find it endearing that he’s making mod culture references and acting hip. But as I saw him posing with his champagne flute he seemed to me to be a blank canvas, that has gone from gawky, unnoticed teenager to uber-trendy world leader in one bound – with too little life experience gleaned in between.
With challenges as varied as Brexit, housing, the Budget, a renegotiation of the Confidence and Supply deal and the annual winter of discontent in the Health Service looming, Mr Varadkar will define himself by how he rises to meet them. And floating above it all – like a chopper in the clouds – won’t get it done.