The Irish Political bubble is, apparently, convulsed by questions over whom it was that was on the other end of a phonecall apparently taken by Minister Patrick O’Donovan, shortly before he collapsed and was sent to hospital, where he continues his recovery.
In media land, journalists take great care to make sure to be as oblique as possible about the identity of the caller.
Now, full disclosure: I don’t know who it was. I’ve been told the same name by about five different people at this stage – but not directly by anybody involved.
That said, to be rightly described as a “senior government figure” according to the usual media conventions, you would need to hold one of the two or three most important Ministries – Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs – or be either the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste. We also know that the person on the other end of the phone was a Fine Gaeler, which rules out Micheál Martin and Jim O’Callaghan. There are precisely two people left, then, who fit the bill. Besides, such is the state of Fine Gael that there aren’t many people in it these days who can be described as “senior”.
But what we know is this: Following comments that he made that appeared to be critical of anonymous briefings against him, the Minister was sent off to take an urgent phone call that lasted some time, and after it was over he went back inside the venue and promptly collapsed.
Of course, O’Donovan has epilepsy, and there is no established evidence connecting the contents of the call to his subsequent collapse. The timing may have been entirely coincidental.
Later that evening, Simon Harris – indisputably a “Senior Government Figure” – rushed out a statement defending his Minister.
If I was an opposition leader, I know what I would be asking at the next leader’s questions that the Tánaiste takes: Did Simon Harris make that call? The Tánaiste, like every other Minister, is obliged to answer questions in the house truthfully.
But moving on from that, the bigger problem is that this kind of nonsense is on the coalition agenda at all. Patrick O’Donovan may be a good Minister, or he may be a bad one. Either way, he is a very junior one whose apparent “error” was to accidentally deny €20m in funding for RTE.
If the price of making RTE poorer is having an allegedly incompetent Minister in charge, then my advice is that we should all be voting for the dumbest possible candidate at the next election. If they can’t save money in Montrose competently and for good ideological reasons, then complete inability to do their job will just have to suffice. Ends, not means.
The most concerning thing is that the Fine Gael party seems to think this matters. Whatever about the wider electorate, it would have won much greater support from its traditional supporters had its response to RTE complaints about the budget been a simple “go and jump in a lake, RTE”. Instead, “Senior Government Figures” seem so annoyed about a relatively fractional cut in RTE’s budget that they are prepared – allegedly – to bollock their own ministers over it.
This, more than many other stories, sums up Simon Harris’s leadership of Fine Gael. He is preternaturally obsessed with the daily back-and-forth of stories, and squashing the bad headline in a newspaper over a story that doesn’t matter – to the complete neglect of any long-term sense of who his party’s voters are, or what they wish to see accomplished.
What he has never understood is the concept of the good row: The fight that you might lose tactically, but win strategically. He has never understood the concept that being on the wrong end of the media sometimes puts you on the right side of the public. Bertie Ahern, for all his flaws, was never that worried when Fintan O’Toole condemned him. Nor should he have been.
Right now, across the country, families are looking at winter with fear and trepidation. Filling the oil tank. Fueling the car. Spending on Christmas. Sick relatives, and so on. And what have they had from the party that – more than any other – is supposedly on the side of taxpayers? An internal row over money for RTE.
And all this at a time when one of their own Ministers is recovering in hospital, having collapsed in the middle of the controversy.
These are not serious people, and they have no business running a serious country.
Contrary to what you might think, this writer has no animus towards Fine Gael. I would very much like to see a serious Fine Gael party at the heart of Government – one with the identity it used to have, as being a defender of taxpayer interest, strong on law and order, moderate on international affairs, and ruthlessly competent in administering the state.
But that’s not the Fine Gael party we have. What we have is a soap opera led by a man who can’t stop making statements and interventions in the media – but who does not have any sense at all of what his party is supposed to do, beyond getting nice pictures in the papers.
Tell RTE to get stuffed, Simon. Your approval rating will go up.
O’Donovan’s crime was teasing the culture card without clearance, and having felt slighted, responding by petulantly withholding RTE funding. This is the story of a renegade minister. Let’s not row in behind him because we dislike RTE or his leader.
But I *do* dislike his leader. I came of age during the financial crisis and developed an early loathing of Fianna Fail. I despised their policies, their culture, their flawed pedigree. Fine Gael was a beacon of professionalism and decorum, in contrast.
But compare the two parties today. One is led by a college dropout with no principles, who is throwing fuel on the Gaza and NI fires. Its foreign minister is a monotonous humanoid who is surely the most inept minister of her generation. Its culture minister is a madcap culchie who is endangering his government because he didn’t get his way.
The other party is led by a man of principle who has held the line on Irish nationalism. Its justice minister is a senior counsel with a degree from Cambridge who is getting on with the difficult work of tightening immigration controls. Its public expenditure minister has degrees in medicine and law and has just shown himself to be the most fiscally prudent politician in a decade.
Ten years ago, which one would have guessed is which? Fine Gael and Fianna Fail haven’t just merged, they’ve flipped, and so too has my loathing.
Minister O’Donovan and Minister Harris have been promoted beyond their capabilities. If they are the best Fine Gael can come up with then all is lost for them.