Foreign Affairs is a prestige position. Itās like the Grand Offices of State, the ones you want are Finance, Justice and Foreign Affairs. In terms of building up your rep itās a great one as you generally avoid scandal.
Finance is the obvious stepping stone one to the leadership but Liam Cosgrave, Biffo and Garrett all arguably made their reps in that department. Wouldnāt want justice.
There were two narratives coming from Fine Gael on Varadkar and Coveney as cabinet ministers. The negative on Varadkar was that he pushed for more money in Health just so he could get out. Thatās an interpretation but his colleagues donāt seem to have ageed. The narrative re Coveney was that he was slow to answer other TDs while Varadkar was back in a jiffy. Varadkar won with backbenchers and the cabinet.
All reports were that Varadkar was energetic in getting around the country to meet people. He had his ducks in a row and ultimately even the Kenny wing of the party fell behind him. Hardly lazy.
In terms of overall performance and my interpretation, in transport what could he actually do? This country decided to keep paying welfare and public sector salaries rather than build infastructure. Our tourism industry seemed to recover quite well when he was there though with the Gathering a success (I have no idea what input he had here). In Health, he wasnāt there long enough to have any real impact but is that his fault? In Welfare he did what I despised and brought the 5 Euro across the board increase in. That was him pushing that through budget negotiations with Fianna FĆ”il in order for them not to he able to go running to pensioners and say look at how great we are. It played very well in Fine Gael and is hardly the sign of a lazy Minister, as much as I hate the policy.
The Coveney campaign narrative failed and the proof is in the representatives votes.
I believe the word on the street is that Coveney asked to be taken out of Housing and put into Foreign Affairs. This is after Coveney blathering on about being the one to solve the housing crisis. He ran the first chance he could get.