Most people unlikely to be as happy with McDowell as he is with himself

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell must be the first politician ever in the history of the State to have issued an apology with a shelf life shorter than the lifespan of a mayfly, and that’s usually a single day.

Having apologised to Richard Bruton for his appalling, practically racist, remark, he issued every member of both Houses of the Oireachtas - 220 TDs and Senators - with a letter to the effect he was correct about garda figures, the cause of the row.

You would find it hard to come up with such a petty, mean-minded attitude in a school playground.

It was a pity it wasn’t his letter of resignation he issued, because the office could well do without the arrogance of his ego in such a sensitive area.

It says a lot about our Mr McDowell that he had no qualms in disparaging Mr Bruton with his Nazi sneer, comparing the Fine Gael man to Hitler’s propagandist, Joseph Goebbels.

The enormity of the insult, and the public reaction to it, seemingly escaped him, because he originally decided that he was not going to apologise for it.

Common decency demanded otherwise.

Apart from that despicable remark, Mr McDowell had previously insulted John Gormley of the Green Party, in the Dáil. In the aftermath of the recent riot in Dublin, he said that the office of the PDs was “ransacked by a group of Deputy Gormley’s type of people”.

He once compared this newspaper to Pravda, the newspaper which at the time was an official organ of the Soviet Union Communist Party, simply because we had the cheek to disagree with him on an issue.

So he is a verbal bully who should come with an appropriate warning, a trait hardly acceptable in a justice minister.

I would have thought that Mr Bruton’s remarks about garda numbers was a bit over the top when he said that two extra gardaí appeared on the streets of Dublin in the past year. I didn’t think there were two extra gardaí anywhere in the country

It sounded like an exaggeration but the Fine Gael man was quoting figures issued by Mr McDowell, as confirmed by the Taoiseach - and the minister considers himself to be infallible, in a Jesuitical sort of way. He is tops in humility.

It is often amusing to read comments made by politicians which come back to haunt them, especially those uttered in the heat of righteous indignation.

Michael McDowell gave a classic display earlier this week.

But what may have been overlooked was another comment by McDowell, made in his usual, arrogant way: “I am happy to take him (Richard Bruton) on in Dáil Éireann. This type of gutter politics won’t get him anywhere.”

Apart from making our national parliament appear like the OK Corral, he was dead right - for once. That type of gutter politics won’t get him anywhere, and didn’t.

What’s interesting is what he considers to be gutter politics: anything that appears to be a challenge to his insufferable, almost maniacal, belief in his own publicity.

He insisted that the episode does not raise questions about his fitness for office.

“The fact is, it was an intemperate remark, but my fitness for office is decided by my performance,” he said.

Does he believe he can go on making “intemperate” remarks anytime he feels like it, once he believes his performance in office is alright?

But then, whether his performance in office is alright is rather a subjective issue. I doubt if the vast majority of people would be quite as happy about him as the minister is about himself, if only on the question of law and order.

For instance, two years after it was published, he now intends to make 340 pages of changes to the Criminal Justice Bill. Not 340 changes but 340 pages, and he wants it to become law before the summer.

It’s no wonder the opposition parties are totally and utterly frustrated, to the extent they want McDowell to withdraw the bill.

Richard Bruton based his assertion on garda numbers on figures released from the minister’s own office.

As an FG spokesman pointed out, any omissions from the information provided was the responsibility of the minister and he should accept that responsibility rather than attempt to reopen an argument that he has already lost.

Galling it may be to the minister, but there would be a tendency to accept what Mr Bruton had to say on the figures. At this stage, people would be more inclined to believe the opposition than the Government on almost any issue.

But on the question of garda figures, Mr McDowell is the author of any misgivings the public may have on what that current strength of the force is, or is not.

Before the last general election, he whistled up 2,000 extra gardaí and promised they would be on the streets. As soon as he got re-elected, the 2,000 extras became phantoms and disappeared like ballot boxes, to be hauled out on another occasion.

No matter how he may try to disguise it, Mr McDowell misled the people, and what they are going to get instead is a cobbled together part-time, voluntary reserve.

Mr McDowell has decided that the Garda Commissioner has decided (because neither want to accept that the other decided) that’s what the people want.

Apart from the cost of training them, the 4,000 reserves will not cost a bob and so will amount to policing on the cheap, despite what the minister says.

It is interesting, indeed it was anticipated, that McDowell’s reserve police force has already been promoted to the status of the Garda Síochána.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in responding to the controversy over garda numbers, said in the Dáil that the “overall strength of the force, INCLUDING TRAINEES, would reach 14,000 by Christmas.”

This would seem to mean that he certainly considers that the reserve force will be part and parcel of the gardaí, despite the fact the proposal is fraught with problems, not least of which is the fact that the Garda Representative Association (GRA) represents 10,000 of the current 12,500 members of the force.

Maybe one of the reasons a recent poll indicated the public were in favour of a reserve force was simply that they wanted to see a uniform on the streets - any uniform.