Market Grinch spoils Padraig’s Christmas

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

City Councillor Pádraig Conneely feels like a bold child who’s been struck off Santa Claus’s Christmas presents list. Poor Pádraig is not feeling the Christmas cheer from the ‘bah humbug’ organisers of the city’s Continental Christmas market.

In fact, the market company is the equivalent of the Grinch that stole Pádraig’s Christmas.

It’s over a fortnight now since Pádraig didn’t receive an official invitation to the launch of the Christmas market, but his nose is as out of joint as a snowman’s.

Pádraig may look and growl like Ebenezer Scrooge but he’s fond of the festive season.

And there’s nothing more he looks forward to than the Christmas Market – or, to be exact, giving out about the Christmas Market.

In previous years, Pádraig complained that Eyre Square was left in a horrible state after the Christmas Market departed. This year he’s not happy that Lidl supermarket apparently had 11 stalls at the market.

And when Pádraig has a complaint, he’s not the sort to bottle it up and keep it to himself. So up he hopped on his high reindeer, and got his loud-hailer out, and made as much noise as possible.

Now he’s convinced that his outspokenness and the lack of an invitation to the opening of the Christmas Market are in some way connected.

Or as Pádraig rather dramatically put it, he was, “eliminated from the invitation list”, for raising concerns about the market.

Like a dog chewing a bone, Pádraig added: “It has always been my practice to raise issues of public concern and will continue to do so in the public interest.”

Maybe the invite was lost in the post. But if it was deliberate, Milestone Initiative, the market operators, might find to their detriment that leaving Pádraig off the invite list is more hassle than it’s worth. They’re another one struck off his Christmas card list, which is getting shorter by the day.

You don’t bring me flowers anymore

It’s not today or yesterday Dáil Éireann has been labeled a ‘talking shop’.

In theory, the opposition holds government to account in the Dáil. It rarely works that way.

In practice, the real power lies not in the Dáil but with the Cabinet. And even that’s being generous.

Because the reality is it is a subset of Cabinet, the Kitchen Cabinet – the Economic Management Council made up of An Taoiseach, Tánaiste and two Finance Ministers – who make most decisions.

The Government of the day always treats the Dáil with contempt. Ministers regularly go in, read out prepared scripts, and leave when the opposition Deputies get up to respond.

That’s why the Dáil chamber is often empty – TDs are all down the Dáil bar or gazing into mirrors in their offices or are in their constituencies cutting ribbons and brown-nosing for votes.

Éamon Ó Cuív, the Galway West TD, hit the nail on the head recently when Environment Minister, Alan Kelly, left the chamber, during an important debate on Irish Water.

It appears Dev Óg’s love affair with parliament is on the wane. The government benches were empty . . . it prompted Dev Óg to wonder what it was all about.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.