Once in a full moon!

Tonight’s full moon is set against the background of the most extraordinary day in Irish politics since 1982. They say a week in politics is a long time. So what does that make 24 hours? It seems a long time ago since Micheal Martin was unceremoniously sent packing by Brian Cowen. The general public are underwhelmed by the move although judging by the Taoiseach’s behaviour on the order of business you’d have thought he’d just won the lotto, he was so high out! They say that to win you must be lucky, if that’s the case, Brian Cowen must be the most fortunate victor FF ever had. Martin is seen as being indecisive, citing the smoking ban of 7 years ago as his big achievement, while Lenihan is seen as having mis-led FF back benchers while Mary Hanafin thinks that Brian Cowen may not be good enough to be leader of Fianna Fail but is still Taoiseach material. Says all it ever needs to be said of the slum that has become Fianna Fail.
But today there’s even more! A reshuffle was to be held to fill the cabinet seats of departing cabinet and junior ministers. The best of FF strokes to pack the cabinet with as many members as possible was rumbled by the greens who have in the last few years packed as many party members into ministries, the senate and state bodies. The offshot of the whole thing is that the government is collapsing into a disorganised shambles that puts Fianna Fail first.
The Greens have still indicated that they want to stay in office to facilitate the finance act even though there is no trust between them and Fianna Fail. What they need to tell us is do they mean if the finance bill passes the Dail or the Seanád. Next week will see the Labour motion of no confidence and bizarrely the greens may vote in support of a discredited and shambolic government.
There's just 9 cabinet ministers left and if the greens 2 ministers go there will be less than half the cabinet left! There may not be a quorum for a cabinet meeting! If Cowen is shown the door by the FF backbenchers then the country may not have a government the ministres may have to tripple up in responsibility!.
Prolonging polling day to March 11 will draw out the pain and indecisiveness. The time has come to draw a line under the shambles of Ahern & Cowen. Let’s have an election now and a debate between Labour and Fine Gael about issues as to who’s best able to lead a new government.

Cowen’s last throw of the dice changes very little

Well the reshuffle is over and it seems that Mary Coughlan the minister who doesn’t know her Einstein from her Darwin is now my boss. She’s well known for her earthy language but she’ll need all her communication skills to win teachers over. She’s effectively swapped places with Batt O’Keeffe. Otherwise it’s all change, if only for the departmental letterheads. There’s plenty of new departmental stationary contracts on offer as FF & the greens kick start job creation by changing departmental titles but otherwise it’s the same old Mary Harney, Micheal Martin, Dermot Ahern, Eamon Ó Cuiv and Noel Dempsey. Hell some of these people are around longer than the Rosslare Waterford railway! Mind you at least the railway’s worth holding on to.
There’s no sign of accountability in this reshuffle for the HSE shambles nor e-voting machines. I remember meeting Pat Carey when I canvassed for Roisin Shortall. He is a genuine man who worked hard in Finglas. I wish him well and hope he can bring to the Gaeltacht and communities the clear and caring approach he took to dealing with drugs as Junior a few years ago. I think if you represent an urban area that suffers this scourge that you’re better placed to tackle this menace as Pat Rabbitte did many years back.


I’m pleased that Séan Connick has been appointed as a Junior Minister for Marine. He’s the 3rd FF Junior minister for Marine from Wexford in 10 years. What is about FF leaders that they associate Wexford with fish and ships? By all accounts Séan is a very promising and straight forward TD. On Drivetime Mary Wilson asked him if he had a vision to which he replied “No”, and then he corrected himself to say “Yes, but I’m not going to tell you over the phone”.
I’m pleased that someone as committed to rail transport like Ciaran Cuffe is now in charge at Transport. Given his strong opposition to rail closures it’ll boost the campaign to see the Rosslare Waterford line being retained and developed. By this I’ll judge both him and Minister Connick. The greens are surely unique internationally in having 83% of their Dail party serving as minister while the luckless Paul Gogarty has the comfort blanket of being chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Education. If only the greens could organise the National Lottery, we’d all win the jackpot every 5 years! Throw in 4 senators hand picked at various times as well as the consolation appointments to Quangos made to defeated local authority candidates and its hard to understand why the green agenda hasn’t been rolled out more, unless of course they’re keeping something back for their second term in power.

But the suggested Department of Economic Development never materialised, nor did the rotating greens. It’ll have annoyed Fianna Fail that more back benchers didn’t get preferment. Leo Varadkar’s smoke screen of a personal attack on his former party leader provides the perfect cover behind which FF back benchers can lick their wounds. I’ve never liked Leo’ approach. Could it be a case that soon FG may have their own reshuffle and that Leo will find out what a family at war is really like?

Enough of Harney picking over the nation's carcass!

Few Ministers have presided for as long as Mary Harney in the history of the state. She’s spent 12 years in office continuously and add to that the period that she spent as a successful Junior Minister at Environment where she pioneered smokeless fuel. Her senior at the time was Padraig Flynn and the pair were nickname Smog n’ Smug!
When Harney transferred to Health in 2004 she told us that she’d bring her business like approach to health and shorten waiting lists, improve services and give us a first class health service. After the latest scandal at Tallaght Hospital she’s no nearer her goal than she was over 5 years ago when she took up the job. In 2005 she said she wanted a 7 year stint to complete her job. Her optimism is groundless, she’s brought us no nearer a better health service. It’s about time we as a nation heeded her advice from another issue and shopped around for another Health Minister.

She really has a dreadful record, Missed diagnosis at Port Laoise, Galway, Limerick, Hospital closures in Monaghan, Ennis, Dundalk as well as the infamous reconfiguration of the Mid-West, North East, South, and South East, the Co Location financing of private hospitals, PPARS, Failure to regulate the nursing home sector, A&E charge doubling in the last 5 years and all the time physiotherapy and psychological services for children services are long fingered as Ms Harney hones her taste for foreign travel. Her constant companion in clocking up the air miles is her FAS veteran husband. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, particularly if your on a waiting list for surgery on a vegas nerve.

The ire of most people is kept for her creation , HSE. Patients are glad of a service and appreciate the work done on wards, in operating theatres and clinics up and down the country. What they want to see is more. We are told that Ireland is striving towards best international practise and that at the end the HSE will be held up as a model for other small countries, consultant led teams treating patients in modern speciality hospitals. What we’ve mostly got so far is duplication of management and a Minister who fundamentally cannot distinguish between a social economy and a market. Since 2005 civil servants in the Health Department mirror the HSE employees who work in brand new offices on the Millennium Park HSE complex, leased from her good friend by tax payers. Amid the chaos Harney refers question on health the political section of the HSE. When the Head of the HSE Professor Drumm goes to meet TD’s its bedlam as about 100 deputies try to question him about the implications of his decisions in their own area in a limited amount of time.


I’m fed up with those who run our health system stumbling from crisis to crisis. Where will it be next month? Can we afford any longer Harney’s clichés? Fair deal or “If it was just a question of money it’d be solved by now”. The sad reality is that Harney has demoralised the staff and frightened the general public into an expectation of poor standards in our hospitals. The reality is otherwise. Recently one of my children broke their arm. I went to Wexford General Hospital at 5 PM. My son was x-rayed, diagnosed, treated and referred to a fracture clinic within 2 hours. There are good experiences in our health services to be had in spite of the quality of leadership at top.

So what is the way forward? The genie is out of the bottle, accountability is gone, every day Wexford gets closer to a re-configuration that will mean the service delivery in the South East is regionally based rather than local. If there is a change of government in the morning this roll out won’t change because management have been given control of delivery. It’s reconfiguration or nothing!

The forthcoming re-shuffle is fundamentally different to what Ahern did in 2004 when he morphed into a socialist who broke bread with Fr Sean Healey. That transformed FF in the polls and set them up for 2007. The forthcoming reshuffle is predicated against taxpayers being taken to the cleaners to keep bankers, developers and FF in clover. The most potent expression “There’s no NAMA for me” says it all. There’ll be no bailout for FF, Harney and the Greens.
Enough is enough, The health minister should return from New Zeeland to take control of the latest crisis. Then Harney should be shown the door at the reshuffle, accountability has to start.