Seething
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Gas man 
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Suck it up pal. FFG have disgraced themselves spectacularly even by their standards.
We may get a few more if any tds have to cancel holidays abroad early to return. Could be a bloodbath
Sounds like theyâre getting a nice bit of notice to make their way back. Iâm sure someone from one of the parties is somewhere they shouldnât be.
Stinks of welfare cheats us all
Justine McCarthy: Put Dail on course to restore public trust
Oireachtas must be recalled after hitting the rough with golf society gaffe
Sunday August 23 2020, 2.00am BST, The Sunday Times
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In a land marooned by biblical pestilence and destructive tempests, the countryâs rulers gathered to partake of a feast after two daysâ sport. âLet them eat cake,â they toasted, clinking their goblets of plenty. Beyond the glowing windows, the people were bent over with adversity. A terrifying pandemic had frozen their lives while violent storms raged in from the ocean, whipping away whatever vestiges of strength they had left. The people were at their witsâ end.
âTrust us,â toasted the rulers as they partied on. Among the more than fourscore present was Dara Calleary, the minister for agriculture, who only the day before had sat at a three-hour cabinet meeting, where he and his colleagues decided that a maximum of six, down from 50, were allowed gather for indoor social events. There, too, was Phil Hogan, the EU trade commissioner â a pivotal figure in the increasingly ominous Brexit negotiations that have potentially disastrous economic consequences for Ireland. There was SĂ©amus Woulfe, a newly appointed Supreme Court judge following his stint as attorney-general, when he gave the government legal advice on restricting the peopleâs movements in the pandemic. Yet another was Jerry Buttimer, the leas-cathaoirleach of Seanad Eireann whose home county of Cork was being battered by storm-force 11 winds as he and other members of the Oireachtas Golf Society lived it up in Clifden on Wednesday night.
Stick together by staying apart, the rulers told the people, while they did the complete opposite themselves. Solidarity will see us through these dreadful times, they said, flouting the rules they set for the people. Trust us, they said, we are your wise leaders.
What were the people to do? No medical cure had been found for the deadly virus, and no vaccine to stop it spreading, either. About 22.5 million people in the world had been infected with Covid-19. More than 750,000 had died. And so they heeded the leaders, by and large, and did what they were told to do. They buried their dead without proper funerals. They cancelled their weddings. They isolated themselves from their grandchildren and their grandparents. They forfeited air fares they had paid for foreign travel and stayed at home.
Now their leadersâ utter hypocrisy has made it impossible for many of us to trust them any more. They have stomped all over our solidarity in their giant clodhoppers with their feasting, destroying the only anti-serum we had for the coronavirus.
In future, when politicians tell us to stick together, our response to them may be unprintable. First, an MEP â Billy Kelleher â turns up in Dublin to witness his party leader become taoiseach, contrary to government travel advice. He is forgiven. Next, the chairman of Failte Ireland, Michael Cawley, goes to Italy on holiday while the agency is spending public money telling people to holiday at home. He resigns. Days later, a microcosm of the great and the good gathers in Clifden for an overnight golf society outing. What possessed them? Did it not cross their minds they were breaking the rules? Or were they so stuffed with self-entitlement they decided the rules did not apply to them?
Whatever the reason, their behaviour has put the people in greater danger because it has exposed their exhortations for solidarity as unadulterated hypocrisy. This has happened at the worst possible time.
The days are shortening. There is a chill in the air. Soon it will be winter. Ever since the pandemic arrived in Ireland at the end of February, the biggest fear has been the encroachment of winterâs icy tentacles, when flu season gets a grip on our hospitals and the populace withdraws indoors. Autumnâs stormy advent coincides with worrying increases in Covid infections, just as schools are about to reopen after more than five monthsâ shutdown.
This is a moment when we need to stand together as much, if not more, than ever. For a variety of reasons, reopening society was always going to be a harder job than shutting it down. Ennui and virus-fatigue make us complacent and impatient. Vested interests set cohort against cohort, sector against sector. Grudges sprout from the hierarchy of priorities built into the roadmap. Humankind is a sociable species. Connecting with each other is harder when we have to wear face masks and remain physically distanced. In his hauntingly applicable novel, The Plague, published in 1947, Albert Camus described how passengers on trams âall try to keep their backs turned to their neighbours, twisting themselves into grotesque attitudes in the attempt â the idea being, of course, to avoid contagionâ. These are all fertile conditions for breeding suspicion of one another; dividing us and conquering us.
As Covid has amassed enormous health, economic, psychological and social casualties, it has put a greater strain on fraternity. Some older people complain they are being penalised because of some younger peopleâs recklessness. Younger people complain their lives are being suspended because of the vulnerability of older people. Meat factories and direct provision centres have been identified as places of greater contamination. Rural politicians claim country pubs are being victimised because Dublin is a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Anyone flying off on a sun holiday is a âselfishâ unmentionable.
The governmentâs latest set of rules is littered with anomalies and contradictions. Even some of the ministers who made those rules, including health minister Stephen Donnelly, didnât know what they were after they had agreed them. The national Covid-testing and contract-tracing system does not engender confidence, either.
Yet, instead of admitting these flaws and fixing them, our rulers target young people having house parties. In an RTE interview the evening before the Clifden dinner, Calleary delivered a diatribe about young people engaging in these activities. Such sentiments send the subliminal message that the rest of us ought to rat on the generation whose academic lives, career prospects and potential romances have been crushed by the pandemic. There is little acknowledgement of âthe frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every calamityâ, which Camus also observed.
For the first four months of the pandemic here, Ireland had no government, following the general election on February 8. Since the election of the taoiseach on June 27, the Dail has sat for five weeks. During that time, a small army of government advisers was appointed; the tanaiste, Leo Varadkar, secured his own aide-de-camp and a state car for his party colleague, foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney, and TDs voted for extra pay for super junior ministers.
Five weeks after the government was formed, the Dail went off on six weeks of holidays. The taoiseach must recall it promptly to acknowledge the peopleâs disgust with the body politic. If there is any hope of restoring solidarity and trust in politicians, that has to be the first step on a very long road back to a place of trust.
They seperated a few years back.
Didnât she pop one out a couple of weeks ago.Anvil I mean
Yep.
It will be interesting to see who the government put forward for the EU commissioner gig. Coveney would be a big loss to them and would the government fancy a by-election in Cork. McGuinness has a high standing in the European Parliment so she might be a better choice for the government. Then again they might send one of the Healy-Raes.
Has there been any opinion polls in recent weeks?
It would be interesting to judge the mood outside of the free spirited TFK cohort.
Francis Fitzgerald has officially declared interest in the commissioner role. I know substitute teachers with more ability than her ffs. Can you imagine her rolling up to the staff civil servants who all respected Hogan and trying to inspire themâŠ
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Votes seem to be broadly splitting to FG (35%) or SF (30%). FF getting squeezed (11%) as are the Greens (3%).
Interestingly Soc Dems (5%) and Labour (5%) would have 10% together and be a meaningful force if they do what will eventually happen anyway and coalesce.
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Itâs time to put petty inter-party squabbles aside, avoid a rancorous by-election and keep lightweight MEPâs where they are. An established political heavyweight is required, one who will engender respect, authority an fear in equal measure. Experienced, familiar with European issues and maschinatons, cunning, devious and a proven fixerâŠ
Bertie Ahern is the man for the role.
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Its Endaâs to lose.
Do the OâSheas know this? More appropriately, what does Jimmy Sloyan think.
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