Political World
Irish politics – the art of turning big ships while mastering science of slow bicycles
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
The week after the Budget was the quietest and most uneventful week in Leinster House, possibly since the election.
It was not as if nothing was happening. The Government launched its long-awaited strategy on substance misuse, particularly its plan to reduce alcohol consumption in Ireland.
The major event was the EU Summit in Brussels. Taoiseach Enda Kenny was there, with an agenda to ensure that Ireland’s exit from the bailout on December 15 would not come with too many terms and conditions attached.
Instead, the summit was dominated by the admirably-robust response of Angela Merkel to the revelations from US whistleblower Ed Snowden that her personal phone had been monitored by the US’s National Security Agency since 2002.
But for those haunting the corridors of the national parliament, they were very much peripheral to all those events. The one thing of note that happened in Leinster House was Enda Kenny’s appearance in the Seanad for two hours, the first time he has visited the Upper House since the referendum defeat. That said, the conciliatory nature and lack of mutual recrimination made for a kind of nondescript afternoon.
Over the course of the weekend I was rereading The Power Game, the book on Fianna Fáil written by my Irish Times colleague Stephen Collins. The chapter on the arms crisis was fascinating, not least in the events following the sensational disclosure that Government ministers may have been involved in a plot to import arms for Northern militants. Collins described the atmosphere of turmoil and of crisis that gripped Leinster House.
That kind of carnival happened a few times when Charlie Haughey was Fianna Fáil leader, and when challengers heaved against him. The most recent examples of utter chaos came during Brian Cowen’s unhappy reign: the bank guarantee of October 2008; the loss of sovereignty and the IMF intervention in late 2010; and Cowen’s spectacular misjudgement in axing half his Cabinet in January 2011.
But those moments of high drama are very rare events. For the most part, the business of politics is humdrum and incremental: the scrutiny of legislation; the pursuit of policies that are important yet technical; committee work that takes up a huge amount of time yet is rarely reported.
In other words, it is often hard-to-explain and boring. The stuff the media veers towards is personality clashes or process stories – far more alluring, far easier to explain.
Quiet week and all that it was last week, there was one common thread that ran through all the four political highlights. And that is that change in a society, even a small society like Ireland, happens very slowly and very incrementally.
We are all familiar with the cliché about the big ships are the slowest at turning – and Irish politics is a port stuffed with those big ships.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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