McDowell electoral hopes up in smoke?

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, we were told this week, had depicted himself as the ‘Messiah of Dublin South East’ who had engaged in the “final betrayal”.

But no, it was not a fellow PD talking about his apparent attempt to challenge Mary Harney for the party leadership.

Instead, it was Fine Gael’s young pretender, Lucinda Creighton, who will run for a Dáil seat in Mr McDowell’s constituency at the next election.

She was talking about a very different issue which got very little attention because of the focus on the leadership row — but which arguably hurt Mr McDowell’s electoral hopes much more.

Dublin City Council wants to build an incinerator on the Poolbeg peninsula, to the opposition of local residents, who happen to be Mr McDowell’s constituents.

On Tuesday night in the Dáil, the Green Party tabled a motion which called for several new initiatives to tackle waste management. Crucially, the motion also urged Environment Minister Dick Roche to order the council to vary its waste management plan “by the deletion of paragraph 18.8 to exclude the siting of an incinerator on the Poolbeg peninsula in south county Dublin”.

Effectively, the party was calling on Mr Roche to ensure the incinerator would not go ahead in Poolbeg.

But Mr Roche believes the incinerator should be built there. Last year, his department gave the council the green light to enter into a public-private partnership, or PPP, to develop the controversial facility.

Which is where Mr McDowell comes in. The Justice Minister vehemently opposes the plan, saying Poolbeg is the wrong location for the incinerator.

So which way would he vote on the matter in the Dáil? Would he vote with the Government and thus face the risk of taking flak from his constituents? Or would he do the unthinkable and vote against the Government in order to defend his constituents’ interests?

In the end, he did neither.

After the Green Party tabled its motion on Tuesday night, the Government responded with a proposed amendment. This is the usual procedure for any Government when faced with something it doesn’t like: it rejects the original motion and, with the help of its majority, passes an amended form which is much more favourable.

In this instance, the amendment unsurprisingly praised the Government’s record on waste management. And on the issue of the incinerator, it reaffirmed that “any decision on the proposal for an incinerator at Poolbeg will be the subject of independent determination processes by An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency through the normal planning and licensing processes”.

This was diplomatic speak for saying the Government would do nothing to stop the incinerator going ahead.

Debate on the motion continued into Wednesday, watched from the visitors’ gallery by Ringsend residents, before it was voted upon. Sure enough, the amended version was passed by 61 votes to 52.

Mr McDowell, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the minister said he could not vote because he had been at Santry Garda station on the night, receiving a crime briefing from officers. “But the Government amendment reflects his own position,” she said, before stressing Mr McDowell remained ‘vigorously opposed’ to the proposed location of the incinerator.

Which no doubt is the case. But by his absence from a vote which constituents watched with great concern, Mr McDowell did himself no favours.

The opposition wasted no time in capitalising on his absence, hence Creighton’s remarks.

Mr McDowell undoubtedly would see it very differently. He has made it known to constituents that he has fought their case at the Cabinet table. It was originally feared that the incinerator would be included on a Government scheme to fast-track major infrastructure projects, thus overcoming obstacles such as residents’ opposition. Mr McDowell was largely credited with ensuring that didn’t happen.

But that was last year. This week, there was no one in the Dáil to defend his record. All politics is local, as US politician Tip O’Neill famously remarked. Could it really be that Mr McDowell forgot that rule this week?