Coalition finding it hard to quell dissenting ranks

THE failure to fully reopen hospitality has sparked fears in the Government that it could lose the support of backbenchers.

Some ministers conceded the Cabinet had been ‘shaken to the core’ by the U-turn on foot of warnings by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) of a fourth wave of Covid-19, driven by the

Delta variant.

One minister told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘NPHET came out of the dark. They are the masters of spin, far better than us. We are innocents when compared to the doctors.’

Another Cabinet source said: ‘We are still scrambling to regain our credibility. We looked as though we didn’t do our homework.’

Despite the fallout with NPHET, the Coalition is becoming more confident that a route can be found through the challenges posed by the new variants, particularly in light of a booming vaccine programme.

One minister noted: ‘I think [Chief Medical Officer Tony] Holohan and company are deeply conservative, but he has decisively won the argument.

The opposition were screaming for a briefing so they could go out and demand everything be reopened. Then when they got their briefing they went very quiet.

‘There is a political calculation involved of how much grief can restaurants cause us versus the alternative of a full lockdown and 400,000 infections.’

But the source warned: ‘It will be hard to reverse the fury of the backbenchers. [Taoiseach] Micheál [Martin] really lost the dressing room last week.’

Threats by former ministers Michael Ring and John Paul Phelan at this week’s Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting to vote against the Government on any future lockdown measures were dismissed by Cabinet sources.

But one source told the MoS: ‘At least we are keeping a veneer of civility. These two are the licensed dissenters. Fianna

Fáil, though, they are spiralling out of control.’

Party leader Micheál Martin also came under fire from familiar critics at the party’s weekly meeting. However, significantly, among the dissenting voices this week was first-time Cork

East TD James O’Connor, who warned the Fianna Fáil brand was becoming ‘toxic and irrelevant to young people’.

Fianna Fáil TD John

McGuinness told the MoS: ‘Micheál was rightly rattled. You always know something is in the ether when Michael McGrath, Jack Chambers and Billy Kelleher are sitting at the top table saying we are in this together. Together! That’s a first.

‘Willie O’Dea gave him a drubbing and Marc McSharry, but it is the others who are beginning to feel the pinch, that are to be watched,’ the CarlowKilkenny TD added.

One senior source said there is ‘an air of instability’ circling the Coalition, adding: ‘There are almost shades of Brian Cowen surrounding it all. Don’t forget – the wheels came off the Cowen government bit by bit.

‘If we lose the [Dublin Bay South] by-election outside of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael there is no shortage of windy Greens who are aching to leap.’

Limerick TD Willie O’Dea, a veteran of the Cowen administration, told the MoS: ‘If one goes it encourages others, it becomes popular. The rough stuff hasn’t even begun yet’.