If they take one, politicians should use their Easter break wisely

Acting on Seán Ó Fearghaíl’s advice would not preclude TDs from learning lessons from Donald Trump, writes Terry Prone

nderstandably, one of the wisest inputs in the Oireachtas in recent times disappeared without trace pretty soon after it was uttered. That’s what happens to wise inputs in the outrage era.

What happened was that Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl, winding up procedures for a couple of weeks, advised TDs to take a serious break. Over Easter, like. A real one.

“There is a degree of frenetic political activity going on throughout the country,” he told the House. “So I would say to members just to make sure during the Easter period to take some downtime.”

Their health and wellbeing matter, he told them, so go take a break.

Great advice, which, like most great advice, will be ignored by most of those at whom it was aimed. The exceptions are likely to include the Taoiseach, who’ll probably go flying around a mountain on a bike; the leader of the opposition, who may fling himself into seawater way too cold to be comfy; and Leo Varadkar, who has to be looking for a variation on bog swimming as a tension-reducer. Although maybe not. It could be that the first shower after a bog snorkel feels like luxury beyond compare and makes the filth of the causative activity worthwhile. Bit like banging your head off a stone wall, you know? Lovely when it stops.

You might think that Barry Cowen would, during the Paschal season, welcome the chance to lick the wounds arising from the water war, but you’d probably be wrong. Mr Cowen doesn’t recognise wounds. Ever. He has wound-blindness. Covered in political scar tissue, he is, but doesn’t notice it himself. It could be suggested that he suffers from the political version of the ailment called CIPA, where the sufferer never experiences pain, which sounds wonderful but isn’t because CIPA sufferers fail to learn the implications for their own future behaviour of the cuts, bruises, and burns they pick up along the way.

Ditto, in political terms, Mr Cowen, who plunges from one punishing experience to the next, confidence undented, scars unrecognised, firm purpose of amendment unmade, Others in his party will, nonetheless, take some time to consider whether it’s worth getting on board populist issues when those issues are already being driven by the re-named austerity crowd and Sinn Féin.

In the old days in banking, it used to be said that it was a brave banker who took their annual leave. The implication of the axiom is that, once you were out of the country, your figures might be investigated and, should you have mixed up the bank’s money with your own, that might be revealed, hence you’d be better advised to confine yourself, in vacation terms, to long weekends, rather than heading off for a couple of weeks or longer.

It’s a bit like that in Fine Gael this Easter. Members of the party who follow the ceann comhairle’s excellent advice will have lingering doubts about it. Maybe, an internal voice of doubt will suggest, they should be sending an oh-so-casual helpful hint to Simon or a witty observation to Leo or an attagirl to Frances? Just to maintain Top of the Mind Association (TOMA) so the leadership contenders don’t forget the TD when they come into their kingdom? Nothing crawly or openly begging. Just a subtle reminder.

TDs will also worry about which of the contenders is going to come into that kingdom whenever our Enda abdicates, which he will do on precisely the date he decided on 18 months ago. At least Paschal won’t have to worry, having ruled himself out of contention. He’ll have plenty of time for reading, going to the theatre, and visiting art exhibitions, thereby keeping himself in contention for the Renaissance Man of the Oireachtas award, for which, let us be honest, the competition is thin. Not saying most TDs don’t read literary fiction or poetry. But it’s an effort and their lips move a bit while they’re at it.

Acting on Mr Ó Fearghaíl’s advice would not preclude TDs, over the Easter holiday, from learning lessons from US president Donald Trump. Particularly the consistency lesson. In Ireland, we have always demanded consistency from our politicians. If a political party has a policy — for example, favouring sheep over goats — it makes us feel secure to know they favoured sheep over goats yesterday, do so today, and and can be relied upon to go right on favouring sheep tomorrow. When members of that party develop notions about evening up the goat/sheep score, we tell them that this kind of policy wander is OK for the John Halligans of this world, but has no place in proper politics.

Mr Trump has just dropped the mother of all bombs on this kind of consistency. He’s done with it. No issue is too big or entrenched to be abandoned. No theme too personal or precious to be reversed. During his campaign and some time after, Vladimir Putin and the Russians were his best pals. In some cases, it looks as if some of his advisers were being paid by the Russians to reinforce this, but let’s not go there, because that’s just being small-,inded and malicious towards the new president, as mainstream media tends to be until he corrects them by bringing journalism newbies into the White House briefings and selecting their softball queries over the legitimate, if negative, questions of the mainstream outlets.

One way or the other, the Russians and the Trump administration were closer than this — imagine two fingers jammed together. But as of 10 days ago, that closeness is kaput. Vladimir mustn’t know what to do with himself, without the plaudits flying from Donald on a daily basis.

But he should just join the club of passionate credos now tossed in the dumpster by the Donald. Take his Nato gospel, affirmed three times in 2016 and once earlier this year. Nato, according to Mr Trump before he became president, was obsolete. It was obsolete because it was founded a long time ago. That was one reason. The other was that it wasn’t taking care of terror. Either way, it was as obsolete as the abacus. Last Wednesday, everything changed. Mr Trump stood up at a White House briefing and didn’t put a tooth in it. “I said Nato was obsolete,” he announced. “It’s no longer obsolete.”

No pain. No shame. Changed his mind. Get over it. Same with China as a currency manipulator. Same with Syria. Five days ago, his policy was that Syria wasn’t America’s problem and that the homeland needed to be fixed first. Three days ago, he dropped the biggest bomb available to him on Syria.

One wonders if Irish politicians will use the Easter break to learn from Mr Trump that consistency can be cast aside as “the hobgoblin of small minds”. You have to hand it to him. It simplifies things while simultaneously cutting off a key line of criticism.