Apart from a cruel streak, it is hard to follow Bertie’s promotions policy

THIS week has yet again confirmed that one is on a fool’s errand when seeking to penetrate the political mind of our Taoiseach. Yet again he has confounded all in his choice for political promotion.

Mary Wallace TD is a determined and effective political operator. I felt she was badly treated when she was demoted after the 2002 election. She had been Minister of State at the Department of Justice for the previous five years with responsibility for the equality brief.

The reason suggested by some for her demotion was the controversy surrounding the first version of the Disability Bill which ultimately had to be withdrawn.

However, much of the difficulty with that bill stemmed from the incoherence in the Government’s wider policy on the disability issue - an incoherence to which the Taoiseach himself made no small contribution. Ms Wallace’s reappointment now may be a correction for that original injustice.

The success of Fianna Fáil’s candidate strategy in the past two elections has led to an influx of new, mainly younger, deputies into its parliamentary party. This influx includes many talented and ambitious deputies, some of whom have forgone promising careers in other walks of life. However, Bertie Ahern’s peculiar promotions policy has created a bottleneck on advancement. After this week’s events these ambitious backbenchers are not only still stuck at the wrong side of this bottleneck but they are also left unable to discern any consistent criteria by which they can hope for political advancement under this Taoiseach.

It had been assumed that ‘years of service’ was the Taoiseach’s main criterion. In general his approach had been not to grant promotions to those who were in their first Dáil term. In their second or third term they might be fortunate enough to secure a position as a committee whip or vice-chair of a committee. Then, depending on the number of vacancies which became available, they could expect promotion to the chair of a committee. In time they could be lucky enough to get a minister of state position. In this way every vacancy that emerged at the top created a domino of promotions down to the bottom. There is, in fact, only one instance where Bertie Ahern departed from his rule that first-term TDs do not become ministers of state. That was the appointment of Mary Hanafin as Minister of State for Children in 2002. A number of factors explain this exception. Ms Hanafin had particular talents and while she was only about three years in Leinster House, she had been a leading figure on the party’s national executive for two decades prior to that.

In addition, the minister of state vacancy she was filling was occasioned by the knock-on effect of the retirement from the cabinet of her then constituency colleague David Andrews. This week’s appointment is not of course the first time that the Taoiseach has re-elevated a former minister of state who had been sent to the backbenches. He did this in 2002 with four deputies who had been ministers of state under Albert Reynolds but were not retained at that rank by Mr Ahern in his first government.

At the time these reappointments were seen as recognition of their co-operation with electoral strategies in their constituencies in that election. However, there are no electoral considerations to explain Ms Wallace’s return.

The prospects of FF winning two of the three seats in the new East Meath constituency are remote. The promotion may assist Mary Wallace in retaining her own seat. However, her seat should be regarded as safe. If Bertie Ahern considers Mary Wallace’s seat to be in jeopardy, then there are an awful lot more FF seats at risk in 2007 than many of us think.

One of the reasons for the promotions bottleneck is that the Taoiseach has limited his capacity to promote from the backbenches by his unique habit of extending to those whom he has decided to dismiss from cabinet the option of staying on as junior ministers. This facility, for example, was extended to Síle de Valera, Jim McDaid and Frank Fahey after they were demoted from Cabinet in 2002.

While ministers of state are technically appointed by the cabinet, the political reality is that the Taoiseach makes the choice. Criticising him for his choice therefore is futile. However, he can be rightly criticised for the manner in which he goes about some of these appointments.

WHY did he leave it for so long to fill the vacancy left by Ivor Callely’s resignation on December 7? Why did he let speculation develop for more than two months about several deputies, in particular Seán Haughey and Jim Glennon?

The speculation that these northside Dublin deputies were in the frame was informed. Those who were suggesting their names to political correspondents included some who could be classified as ‘close to’ the Taoiseach and who might have been expected to have some insight into his thinking. Of course what this episode confirms again is that no one ever really knows what Bertie Ahern is thinking.

He may be having a wry smile to himself at the expense of the media because he has again managed to keep his choice secret.

However, for those deputies who were given reason to believe they might be in the frame for promotion the Taoiseach’s cruel modus operandi is far from a laughing matter. He could have moved off the record, through functionaries or otherwise, to dampen down speculation, in particular about Mr Haughey. It cannot be pleasant to read about yourself as the likely beneficiary of the Taoiseach’s preferment for weeks and then to be spoken of by several political correspondents as a near certainty in the hours before the announcement only to see the Taoiseach stand up in the chamber a short while later to call out someone else’s name.

Even allowing for the thick skin of politicians, this is an unkind way to operate. Mr Haughey will have known from a younger age than most that politics has its ups and downs, but to have a minister of state position dangled in front of you and then withdrawn in this manner is unnecessarily brutal.

There is another curious aspect of the switch-around of ministers of state this week. It had been the case that a minister of state was often appointed to a portfolio precisely because that area of policy was of particular relevance to his or her constituency. However, Pat The Cope Gallagher has been switched from a portfolio because it is so relevant to his home patch that it makes it politically uncomfortable for him to support a government policy.

What makes it even stranger is that Gallagher is being replaced in marine by John Browne, a TD from Wexford, which is also a county with a sizeable sea fisheries industry. This switch raises questions about the extent to which ministers of state in future will be required to sign up to collective government responsibility.