Defensive Enda puts the law in a safe pair of hands

If Enda Kenny was aiming for the air of a leader not being thrown onto the defensive, perhaps making himself defence minister was not the best move.

Rattled by the loss of someone who had been such a staunch Cabinet ally until their relationship recently soured, Mr Kenny did what old-guard African dictators used to do when they felt threatened, and put himself in charge of the army.

Indeed, his whole reaction to the Cabinet earthquake, was, well, reactionary.

While thrusting Thatcherite Leo Varadkar and cooly calculating Simon Coveney waited for the nod, Mr Kenny was too afraid to put either of the Fine Gael heirs apparent into a portfolio they could use as a springboard for the leadership.

Instead, Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald was elevated to the role, though it was difficult to see what her relevant experience for such a demanding position was — except that she is a close political ally of the Taoiseach and stood by him during all that unpleasant heave business.

Despite her lack of a legal background, Ms Fitzgerald does have one stand-out advantage on her predecessor as Justice Minister — she has never broken the law — though none of Mr Shatter’s erstwhile Cabinet colleagues seemed to have a problem with Mr Shatter’s law-breaking after he was condemned by the Data Commissioner for revealing confidential information about a political opponent during a live TV ambush.

Indeed, Government ministers behaved as if law-breaking was normal for a justice minister — like having an illiterate education minister who refuses to learn to read, or any openly racist foreign minister, perhaps.

But, if Mr Kenny’s spinners in the shadows are to be believed, the Taoiseach’s Shatter smackdown was the bold action of new, improved Iron Enda, who gave his busted ex-buddy just three hours to clear his desk.

This version of events might be more convincing if Mr Kenny had not spent the past three years propping up Mr Shatter, continually voting confidence in him, and refusing to hear a word against the disaster-laden justice minister.

However, at least Ms Fitzgerald’s promotion did something to rebalance the woeful gender gap in the Cabinet, where just two of the 15 voting members are women.

And to compound the situation, until yesterday, they were dealing with traditionally female-focused areas of welfare and children — the housekeeper and the nanny, if you will.

However, the new equality agenda was somewhat set back by Ruairi Quinn’s attempted condescension towards Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald when he sarcastically remarked on her “motherly” concern for the Labour Party in the wake of Shatter finally being told to scatter.

Ms McDonald told him she knew “sexist undertones” when she heard them, and proceeded to give the Education Minister a sharp lesson in how to do deliver a Dáil dig.

Poor old Ruairi, he should not even have been on the receiving end anyway, as it is Eamon Gilmore’s job to be the official Coalition political punchbag — but the Tánaiste was nowhere to be seen.

After being kept out of the loop the previous day on the Guerin report, and only informed of Mr Shatter’s demise less than an hour before everyone else was told, Mr Gilmore really should have tried to at least look centre-stage for the aftermath of the aggro, but instead he decided to head to a canvass in Galway instead.

Clearly, given a choice of going to the hell of the Dáil or Connacht, he chose Connacht — but Mr Gilmore knows that the hell of being made to look like the Coalition’s spare part still awaits him on his return.