Praise never sounded so faint, nor so damning

ONE man ministerial car crash Tim O’Malley was guilty of turning an accident (his bizarre views on mental illness) into an emergency (his potential resignation) yesterday, as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern struggled to clamber through the wreckage left scattered on the Dáil floor.

The Government’s Health Minister of State — and senior clown — sat on his hands squirming as MrAhern went into battle for him with the weary air of a Taoiseach who has defended the indefensible one too many times these past 10 years.

But when the best Mr Ahern can say is that Mr O’Malley is doing his job “to the best of his abilities”, praise has never sounded so faint, nor so damning.

For once, Mr O’Malley was forced to keep his mouth shut, ensuring the double virtue of not having his strangulated accent cut through the chamber like cheese wire and preventing him from offending yet another vulnerable minority.

For a moment, a look of depression appeared to settle over Mr O’Malley, but then, as he effectively told the nation two weeks ago, depression is just a fad, like roller-blading, or ponchos.

Unfortunately, for the parents of seven-year-old Jordan Kelly, depression is not merely a “condition of life” as the minister would have us believe, it is a condition they fear will drive their son to carry out the threats to take his own life.

Jordan, like 3,000 other children in the country, is locked in his own darkness, waiting forlornly to be treated and helped back into the light. Rather than deal with that appalling and dangerous situation, Mr O’Malley passes the blame with cheap jibes at the expense of consultants he claims keep their waiting lists absurdly long in order to inflate their own sense of importance.

Maybe they do, but as Mr O’Malley has been in charge of mental health care for four-and-a-half years, that situation only underscores the fact he is failing in his duty.

This was a point not lost on opposition leaders who smelt ministerial blood. Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny adopted the scathing tone which rattled the Fianna Fáil benches during May’s statutory rape laws crisis.

“Last year, 3,000 children waited in adult psychiatric institutions. Does the Taoiseach realise how much humanity and sanity is lost because so many people are forced to wait because of Government inaction?” he asked.

Mr Ahern’s awkward body language and halting performance made it clear he knew he was on the back foot. Jordan’s misery had sliced through the dry statistics and Budget day boasting of record resources and exposed a lack of humanity at the heart of the health service and among those ministers who run it.