They haven’t gone away you know

I remember the day that the Troika arrived very well. I was Mayor of Wexford at the time and it coincided with a conference of the Wexford Educational Network at which I was asked to speak.  While the country was transfixed by the economic crisis I focused instead in my remarks on 2 shocking incidents that week where 4 children had died violent deaths in that snowy week and the need to put children at the centre of welfare.

I’m reminded of the famous day when Fianna Fail ministers denied the reality of their betrayal of the people because this week we’re at last starting to see the end of that bleak period in our history.   However the Ireland that is emerging from this period is significantly changed socially and economically from the country that crashed into the fiscal wall of 2010.  And while everything has moved on politically and economically from that period there still are issues that need to be tackled.  So as we leave the straightjacket that Fianna Fail locked ourselves into 3 years ago there remains the challenge of  dealing with our societal values.  Perhaps a troika of therapists are now needed to advise on how best to re-organise our state?

Ireland is not just an open economy, it’s a European post colonial state.  Brenán Ó h-Either in his brilliant book assessing the Irish psyche in the 80’s attributes much of our collective attitude to begrudgery. He linked that to cynicism and the Irish sense of self reliance or distrust of authority.  If Ó h-Either was alive now I imagine he’d add anger to that Troika!

There is a lot of anger out there, anger towards politics primarily but also a wider anger towards society. Just listen to liveline and you’ll get an earful of it any day of the week.  It is a growing anger that needs to be challenged.  At its core there is the big lie of they’re all the same.  Fianna Fail were masters of that line for years. It was their defence to anyone who challenged them.  During the week someone said to me that they were considering voting Fianna Fail again as the people who were responsible for the economic betrayal were all gone.  I asked them who was leading Fianna Fail and why was it that they have no Deputy Leader? Was Michéal Martin not in office from 1997-2011 and was it not the case that they have no deputy leader as that would put another of the old guard in the media spotlight?

And the more things change the same it is! So welcome back John O’Donghue, Mary Coughlan, Mary Hanafin. Willie O’Dea, Micheal Martin and Eamon Ó Cuiv are already waiting for you. Unless they’ve learnt something from their past then they are of little use to the state. Indeed their release from the self imposed period of solitary confinement  can only add to the anger and cynicism as most people understand that real issues that affect real people’s lives need to be addressed from 2014 onwards; jobs and employment.  That’s the landscape that dominates politics now, at a local level and national.  Ironic that those who lost their own job so dramatically in 2011 now believe they have the solution to the problems all along.

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?

Can you make Sense or Sensibility from Mary Coughlan?

Our Tanaiste has an extraordinary talent for grabbing the headlines. Her namesake who sings the blues must be mortified when she hears some of the things she comes out with? One Mary Coughlan sings the blues, another delivers them big time! Since her promotion by Brian Cowen she has rarely been out of the headlines because of her gaffes. If there was an Olympic medal for gaffes, this minister’s neck would have sores from the weight of metal hung from it. To be fair to her I’ve always suspected there’s a certain amount of bias against her because she is a woman on the part of the media. For all her incompetence, she didn’t ignore the FAS shambles as Mary Harney did, sanction e-voting as Noel Dempsey or Martin Cullen did or hide behind civil servants as Micheal Martin famously did or sanction PPARS or sell out the tax payer as Woodsy did as he was going out the door to some religious orders.

The constant focus on Mary’s gaffes once more underpin the truth of what Albert Reynolds once said, “You get over the big issues but it’s the little things that trip you up”. So I’ll excuse the slip of the tongue today in the Dail when she mixed up the election with the budget which sounded extraordinarily like “bullshit” when she actually got round to saying it. Likewise I won’t too worried about her not knowing that many years ago each EU country appointed one EU commissioner only because FF have no EU allies and have no role of any significance in EU decision making. I don’t fret when she uses expletives when out canvassing for a FF candidate nor when she mixes up Einstein with Darwin, she’s not a science graduate but a social science graduate and there’s a big difference. I start to wonder when I hear she will legislate to discriminate against gay people.

I get more worried when she wades in with suggestions that McCarthy’s Report makes no sense. She was speaking in the absence of the Taoiseach and representing the government. To make matters worse the most senior other Minister technically her junior, basically has just rubbished her view. It seems to me that her credibility is melting away and that she is this year’s Sarah Palin. Now Sarah didn’t get her hands on the levers of power, Mary on the other hand has been pulling hard for all she’s worth for some years and the more she pulls the more uncredible she gets. When McCarty proposes cuts and Coughlan says they male no sense, don’t minister tell me what you think tell me what will happen.
The FRC in The Rocks needs the money McCarthy will cut to survive, not Minister Coughlan’s inner thoughts. Parents with children with SNA’s need to know if their child will still benefit from this vital help, not whether the minister view of how much, much of the report, makes no sense. I could go on but I think you get my drift. When the Tanaiste starts to stop being a figure of fun and starts being a source of obfuscation, I start getting worried. I think the Tanaiste will be marginalised by her colleagues. She plays no role in Lisbon but admonishes the other parties. She is out of her depth, her humiliation at the hands of Dell management in the run up to job losses there earlier this year inspire no one that this is the Minister that will turn around the unemployment crisis. It’s the stuff of nightmares and the man responsible for this is Brian Cowen. What’s more I fear no one is asking the Taoiseach why he appointed her as Tanaiste when many were suggesting that Mary Hanafin or Brian Lenihan would be better in that role.
It’s a matter of being afraid, be very afraid!

McGuinness snipes at Coughlan from the right!

Every year it arrives like clockwork. I’ve never met him, cannot vote for him but yet he thinks I’m important enough to merit a Christmas Card. I don’t know if he thinks that Kilkenny and Wexford should bury the hatchet and celebrate the nativity together but I don’t think he understands Wexford nor most other counties for that matter judging by his performance on last night’s Late Late.
John McGuinness’s 15 minutes of fame started on the late late show. Nearly 25 years on from the establishment of the PD’s (they haven’t gone away yet, you know!) and the right wing demand to get the state off the back of business and 7 years of a PD minister in the Department of Enterprise and Employment John complains that the department still doesn’t understand the business sector. John went on to say that the future of the republican party depends on the encouraging the small business sector! Heavy stuff that, poor old WB Yeats had it wrong when he wrote about fumbling in the greasy till. There’s a new type of victim in the Gospel according to St John the latter day martyr. It’s business!
Like many who watched, I wondered how John could isolate in his mind the people who will lose Christmas bonuses, the overcrowded classrooms, the reduction in hospital services which John supported so that the Banks could be re-capitalised in order to get money flowing to small business and to end the credit crunch.
But when you run the rule over the current crop of Fianna Fail back benchers who are faced with losing their seats at the next election, many of them are accountants and solicitors, the type of profession that thrived during the boom. This sort of logic is aimed at them and maybe John sees himself as Des O’Malley once did at the head of club that will push Fianna Fail further into the hands of business and further away from its origins in every community in the country. The days when Fianna Fail drew candidates from within a community and could rely on the deep well of volunteerism are gone.
A new type of social partnership is needed according to John. John says unions should get real and do what they do in Germany. But there’s a fear going round workforces in Ireland and it started in the last few months. Workers worry that management and owners are taking advantage of the economic downturn to deliberately re-structure not from the point of protecting the business and jobs but to maximise profits. All of this started on John’s watch as Minister for Trade. The former minister should note that in countries that he referred to, those governments moved to protect jobs much better than he did, when the German ambassador pointed out a few home truths about the Irish business class John’s government rebuked him for pointing out the glaring obvious.
I’d be delighted to see Fianna Fail take on John’s vision. This will further deepen the vacuum that exists between Fianna Fail and communities and create opportunities for the Labour Party. I think real Fianna Fail people are very uncomfortable with McGuinness. If his former senior minister was to go public and remark about him she’d be hounded in the media. John will find out during the year that FF do croneyism very well but not Neo-Thathcherism. So if its cutbacks he favours, spare the tax payer the cost of my card this year, no offence taken but most of all Happy Christmas, John!