FIANNA Fáil leader Micheál Martin
lived down to people’s low expectations of him on Wednesday when he gave this failure of a government a pass that’ll last well into 2020.
Like something out of Pinocchio the Pantomime, Martin insisted that his decision to continue his confidence and supply deal with Leo Varadkar is motivated entirely by the need to maintain stability in Irish politics, as compared to those nutcases over there in the House of Commons.
Fact is, we have our own emergencies here – in housing and health and policing and the general dysfunction in the delivery of public services. And these are the very dysfunctions and failures that Mr Martin is determined to maintain by keeping Fine Gael and their hangers-on in power. What instability could be caused by allowing the people of Ireland to pass judgment on this almost entirely inadequate government? The holding of a general election here would have zero impact on Brexit, seeing as how there is no policy difference between all the parties on the matter. Martin and Fianna Fáil are still nursing the psychological wounds inflicted on them in the 2011 general election. The fight has been knocked out of them.
They now recoil in fear at the prospect of an election – preferring to delay, and delay, in the hope of a better day in the middle distance. It’s all so outrageously self-serving, so devoid of political leadership, so lacking in principle.
Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 children are stuck in emergency accommodation and tens of thousands of people suffer in quiet desperation from deliberate neglect on healthcare waiting lists.
And Micheál Martin goes ahead and extends the life of a government that allows all that to happen.