Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Political establishment in Dublin, London and Belfast find themselves in disgrace

Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary resigned as agriculture minister after it emerged he attended an Oireachtas Golf Society dinner which breached coronavirus regulations. Picture by Mal McCann
Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary resigned as agriculture minister after it emerged he attended an Oireachtas Golf Society dinner which breached coronavirus regulations. Picture by Mal McCann Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary resigned as agriculture minister after it emerged he attended an Oireachtas Golf Society dinner which breached coronavirus regulations. Picture by Mal McCann

Politics may shape everyday life but living takes up nearly all of most people’s thinking space.

Cynical and self-serving politicians can get lucky, as well as the sincere. Near polling day, the fates provide a juicy scandal or an ‘act of God’ like an ungodly storm and voters back strong performers, calm voices. If the vote comes long enough after breathtaking incompetence, even evidence of borderline corruption, elections fail to punish the guilty.

People forget. Though Boris Johnson’s talentless education minister Gavin Williamson might just stick in some memories.

In ‘normal times’ this would be the silly season, when minor scandals fill news coverage. These are not normal times. Experts cannot say with confidence when this virus will fade or be ‘managed’. After months of lockdown and voluntary social limiting there is a push to ‘get the economy back on track’. Come what may, schools are opening. This is all more fraught than locking down and therefore desperately needs the communal effort and goodwill invoked so repeatedly at the start.

‘We’re all in it together.’ Never the most convincing political slogan, that depended on trust, a scarce commodity. Since this was a calamity without precedent many of us – ‘us’, ‘we’, not the most natural words in this part of a newspaper – have tried to ‘do our bit’. Wear the masks, keep friends and family at a distance. Keep your voice down and if you must sing, sing softly. No hugs. But those that votes set over us fell down on the job; Sinn Féin’s entitled mourners, the unelected Dominic Cummings installed by vote-winner Boris Johnson.

Now it’s Fianna Fáil agriculture minister Dara Calleary and bigwigs past and present - including the supreme court judge who a few months back as attorney-general helped draw up the Covid rules. As well as Phil Hogan, Fine Gael nominee for the plum job of European Commissioner for Trade.

It was the Leinster House golf society’s 50th anniversary. Mary Lou McDonald had a neat go at that in her general condemnation, didn’t know the society existed and it shouldn’t, it’s a parliament not a club. Well-geared, this, to her own voters. And some nerve given Sinn Féin presence at the Storey funeral, including herself and Stormont deputy first minister.

The golf do was one of those thickly populated (and how thick they were) by ageing men in the public eye, some attendees more disappointing than others. Like recently retired RTÉ broadcaster Sean O’Rourke, whose speciality was working over politicians. And the famously upright Dick Spring, former Labour leader, tánaiste, clued-up and impassioned oppo to Tory grandee Sir Patrick Mayhew, then occupant of Hillsborough Castle. Spring was there to become new president of the society, former Workers Party TD and judge Pat McCartan to be new captain.

So, all in disgrace this weather, the political establishments in Belfast, Dublin and London. But Sinn Féin straining for the Dáil recall to denounce the flouting rules are chancers. Posing as pure in the Dáil, they are the niftiest partitionists on the island. They did well twice over out of the jaunt by Calleary and Co.

Nobody much in the larger state, mid-swearing about Clifden, was going to note that on Friday last a judge here made it impossible for Mary Lou deputy Michelle O’Neill to keep on stalling pensions for those the Troubles left with life-limiting injury. Hardly anyone ‘down there’ was likely to think ‘but the mess that the Abercorn bomb made of human beings, that was the IRA!’

In whose honour, in spite of virus rules, Sinn Féin’s top cats turned out eight weeks ago. While O’Neill in the name of injured IRA members went on blocking those pitiful pensions. Brass neck and all, she still needed an out. The judge most assuredly did not mean to, but his swingeing judgment did her a favour. And there’s an economic desert to trek through before the next election.