Political World
The changing face of Summer politics
Unfortunately most of us who write about politics don’t get the luxury of an extended break during the summer like our TDs and Senators.
I started writing specifically about politics 12 years ago around this time of year. I moved from The Sunday Tribune to The Irish Examiner to become its political editor.
Sure, I had been knocking around for a while but I had never majored in pure politics. What’s more, I had never worked for a daily newspaper. Newsdesks in the dailies are like hungry chicks in a nest, always squawking for more food. It was a tough initiation.
Anyway I started writing about Irish domestic politics at the start of August 2003, in the dog days of summer when nothing was happening. There were no politicians around. The corridors were empty. It was quiet as the Cork dressing room late last Sunday afternoon.
There’s a tour around Dublin called the Viking Splash, which forces its passengers to pretend they are Scandinavian invaders. Every so often the invaders are encouraged to let out an earthy roar. Inevitably, they all do it outside Leinster House. That regular sound was the only thing that interrupted the silence that summer – you could have set your watch by it.
In the good days, the politicians had all vamoosed by the middle of July. When you tried to get them there was invariably the long beep of a foreign ring tone – they were obviously keen to get among their constituents in the Costa del Sol or along the Algarve!
The main excitement in July came from following the Tour de France on television courtesy of TG4, knowing there was no breaking news story that would interrupt coverage.
Of course, we had to produce and that came down to a combination of pre-cooked interviews (completed in early July) and trawls through parliamentary questions and departmental documents in the hope of finding a news story that others may have missed. It might have been silly season but we still had to file – and often had to file lead stories built on a foundation of, well, a very silken thread.
Nothing like a recession to lift us all from the lethargy. I saw only one full day of the Tour de France this year (it was a day off).
For the rest, politics continued at a million miles an hour right up to the end of the month. It’s been like that more or less since 2008, though not was intense now as it was a few years ago.
Still, the Dáil sits longer and we now have the rather strange phenomenon of an Oireachtas committee (the banking inquiry) sitting right up to the month of August.
Besides that, the Government’s last weekly meeting took place only last week and there are two big controversies that have paid scant regard to the political calendar.
The first is Irish Water. The incoming Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, made a big effort to reduce the temperature on this political pot boiler and to take it off the front pages.
The all-round handling by Government of this new utility had been a disaster with massive public antipathy to what was being done. Kelly came in and tried to tie up the loose ends. The formula he came up with (including a €100 conservation grant) did manage to take some heat out of it.
But it wasn’t enough. Unlike the property tax, people didn’t have the dark shadow of Revenue hanging over them. They knew that the sanctions for not paying their bills was weak and it would take at least a year before any kind of a stick was wielded.
And so they refused to pay in their droves. When the figures came out showing less than 50% compliance for the first bill, the die was cast.
Now Eurostat has compounded the Government’s problems by saying that Irish Water can’t be considered enough of a separate entity to be taken off the Government balance sheet. That means the Coalition is on the hook for an extra €500m per annum.
Now it has said it provided for that when it issued its Spring statement – ar eagle na heagla. But still it is bad. Is this going to be an election issue? Of course it is.
The big beneficiaries will be the groups and parties that have campaigned most aggressively against the water charges. The Anti Austerity Alliance (the nom du guerre for The Socialist Party) will make hay on this one – excuse the mixing of metaphors.
For Harry’s thoughts on politics and the Banking Inquiry see this week’s Tribune here.
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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