Meathman's Diary: Common sense from Ceann Comhairle
A few short weeks ago, on Sunday 19th January, the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, was overseeing a party ard fheis which saw him receive approval from members to go ahead with the negotiated Programme for Government that would make him Taoiseach.
So blinded was he by his impending elevation from Tanaiste, that he failed to notice the gathering storm clouds (and it wasn’t Éowyn), or if he did, chose to ignore them. Similarly, the Fine Gael leader, Simon Harris.
This was Storm Lowry. It didn’t seem to bother either of the two party leaders that they were blatantly doing business with a man that had fallen foul of a tribunal into political corruption, and was still rejecting those findings. A tribunal which one of Michael Lowry’s Regional Independent Group (or Riggers as Miriam Lord calls them), described as a waste of money.
Micheál Martin was asked about the controversy over some members of the Regional Independent Group seeking to remain on the opposition benches despite other members planning to serve in government. He said “the public aren’t excited about an issue like that” but he would take advice on the matter and form an opinion then. Well, he didn’t take very good advice. Because as it turned out, the public weren’t turning as blind an eye to Mr Lowry as Micheál thought. And the Opposition sensed that. This was a man that the now-Taoiseach wanted turfed out of the Dáil in 2011 after the tribunal reported that the former Fine Gael communications minister had helped businessman Denis O’Brien to secure the State’s second mobile phone licence, in behaviour described as “profoundly corrupt”.
Sure, that’s all water under the bridge so. The people of Tipperary keep re-electing him, so he has a Democratic mandate and everything’s all right. But the thing is – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael keep reminding us about the past of other parties, and of course, have plenty of skeletons in their own cupboards too. They would fall out of Micheál Martin’s press if he opened the door too quickly, led by a man who famously and ignominiously did appear in a cupboard (and now, God help us, has presidential notions – Micheál needs to nip that in the bud fairly lively too!) Just when we thought we were getting away from all that skullduggery in Irish politics, up pops Lowry and his cohorts, attempting to sit on both sides of the fence.
And what of Gillian Toole? What had the new Meath East TD to gain by agreeing to a government pact (if no constituency deals were done) while the same time trying to act as an Opposition TD? Surely, she was always best placed on the Opposition benches.
Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy’s decision on Monday night that the Regional Technical Group is not entitled to Opposition speaking time was the only sensible and correct one, and at the time of writing the ramifications of it were not yet clear. We are certainly in for another interesting week in Leinster House.