‘Lobby fodder’ can still shine despite the frustrations of being on back benches

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

A team wins the All Ireland and the captain goes up and says the cúpla focal and then thanks the sponsors and the doctor and the bagman and the back room team and, yerrah, the manager.

And then he goes on to say it’s not the fifteen fellows who took to the field but it was a squad thing. And in his blazingly original way he commends the opposition and, sure, we know what it was like for ye lads, and says hip, hip, hurray.

And when you’re listening to him and you are number 29 out of a squad of 30 and not in the team photograph and not on the pitch and not really remembered and sitting so long on the subs’ bench that your backside is getting numb you know deep down that that is not the way it is.

And if you have any grey matter you also know that your captain is talking a pile of phoney baloney. He can stand up there and say it’s all about the squad until he’s blue in the face.

But the simple undeniable uncomfortable reality is that if you don’t get game time – even for a few piddling moments – it is nothing and you are nothing.

And that is also the lot of your average backbench TD or Senator, especially for a Government party. The most you can hope for is to be told to run up and down the political sidelines to warm up and do a bit of stretching. But for the most part you will get as much involvement in the fray – the cut and thrust of Government – as the average Joe Punter sitting in the stands.

I can’t remember how often I’ve repeated former Fianna Fáil TD Barry Andrews pithy little phrase about the role of a backbench Government TD. I repeat it so often because it’s still the best description by a long shot.

“Lobby fodder” was how Andrews put it.

I was watching the Labour TD for Dublin Mid West Joanne Tuffy on Vincent Browne’s programme on TV3 on Monday night as she got attacked on all sides for her party’s performance in Government. Now, as a point of fact, Labour have actually done much better in the coalition this year than they did in the first two years when they were played by Fine Gael like a cat plays a mouse. That said, Browne and the other guests weren’t thrilled about the self-congratulatory tone of the Labour Party conference (sure, I’ve never been to a party conference that wasn’t self congratulatory).

Anyway Joan took some mild ribbing, particularly over her party’s failure to introduced a third higher rate of tax for high earners. Browne actually quoted a very interesting finding from a recent report from the left-leaning Nevin Institute which showed that the lowest ten per cent of earners in Irish society paid proportionately more of their income in taxes of one kind of another than the highest ten per cent. It was a fair point and Tuffy had no choice but to try to field it.

Her point was that she would have preferred a higher rate of tax but that no increase in tax had been a central plank of Fine Gael’s pre-election manifesto and, as such, she and her colleagues were powerless to get the larger party to shift from that position. Doubly powerless as a member of the smaller party and as a backbencher.

Like the substitute who never gets game time, it can be very frustrating for a backbench TD. Once you are in Government it’s the executive – the Ministers and junior Ministers – who get to call the shots. Some TDs will get a consolation prize – offered the chair of a committee. But for the rest it’s a hard old station. Many spend their parliamentary time making a speech on a Bill they have no feel for, reading from a script that is often written by a party researcher.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.