Outraged government TD acts like Opposition TD

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

The closer the General Election day comes, the more Government backbenchers worried about their Dáil seats morph into opposition TDs.

This process can happen at any stage in the electoral cycle, but usually occurs in the months leading-up to polling day when politicians are at their most neurotic.

For Government TDs, in Fine Gael and Labour, this insecurity manifests itself in public utterances at odds with what they’ve said before during the lifetime of the Government.

For instance, the Government TD will give out about stuff that the Government should have fixed but didn’t fix.

And they appear outraged that the Government has done nothing about it, and try to distance themselves from that Government.

This happens even though the same Buckos, just a few months ago, were trotting out the Government line that something was being done about the thing they complain now hasn’t been done.

We like to call it the The-Outraged-Government-Backbench-TD-Acting-Like-An-Opposition-TD-Syndrome.

It’s all very confusing but let’s take Labour Party Galway West TD Derek Nolan as a recent example.

Derek issued a statement headlined: “NOLAN DEMANDS THAT GALWAY BE INCLUDED IN HOUSING STIMULUS MEASURES”.

Although couched as a critique of civil servants, the accompanying press release was actually a thinly veiled attack on his party’s deputy leader, Environment Minister, Alan Kelly, who had announced a new policy that would increase housing supply in Cork and Dublin but not Galway.

Derek was right to be angry. Galway’s housing shortage is every bit as chronic as the other cities and deserves attention. His outrage, however, might be more credible if he didn’t have the ear of Minister Kelly for the past couple of years.

It might also be more believable if a couple of months ago Derek hadn’t issued a statement headlined: “13.4 MILLION EURO INVESTMENT WILL RESULT IN 87 MORE HOUSING UNITS FOR GALWAY – NOLAN”.

Yet, Galway City Council, months later, is still waiting for the go-ahead from the Department for the bulk of new social houses earmarked for Knocknacarra.

In the accompanying press release, Derek praised Minister Kelly, who had visited Galway, for instigating the “biggest social housing investment in the history of the State”.

Yet now, Derek, sounding like he had contracted a severe bout of The-Outraged-Government-Backbencher-TD-Acting-Like-An-Opposition-TD-Disease, demanded, “the Departmental officials who are responsible for these measures get out of Dublin, come to Galway and see for themselves the price escalations, the rent increases and the complete lack of construction taking place.”

Perhaps going even further than an Opposition TD, he also took a swipe at Kelly, when he insisted, “the Minister includes Galway in these housing supply measures as a matter of urgency”.

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