Labour trips up on pre-election promises as Shortall is ditched
The theme of the last general election was political reform — largely because the country was too broke for the usual auction politics that routinely accompanied every previous election cycle in this country.
The cute hoor clientelism, championed so successfully for so long by Fianna Fáil, and which played a large part in bankrupting the country, was lambasted and derided by those in Fine Gael and Labour.
Pat Rabbitte best expressed the public’s anger, and his party’s commitment to a new kind of politics, in an explosive encounter with former Fianna Fáil Minster Pat Carey on Prime Time in Nov 2010.
“That’s the problem. You’re not ashamed. You don’t have any shame,” he bellowed, as a cowed Mr Carey hung his head in embarrassment and uttered not a murmur of dissent.
Representatives from both Fine Gael and Labour warned that there would be tough times ahead, as the country struggled for economic survival, but vowed that if they were elected they could at least promise to restore some much needed accountability and transparency in government.
We were, they said, all in it together and, whatever else, the public could at least be assured that scant services would be targeted at the most needy.
Laughably, James Reilly professed himself to be one of the biggest proponents of this damascene conversion to ethics in high office.
“The three key principles that underpin everything we do in Fine Gael are transparency, accountability and fairness. One cannot get fairness if one does not have accountability. One cannot get accountability without transparency. We do not have sufficient transparency,” he thundered, during a Dáil debate on the accountability of government agencies and companies.
Decisions, they told a jaded electorate, would not be made in politicians’ interests, but in the public interest. Today, those promises lie in shreds and it is abundantly clear that there has been a wholehearted and enthusiastic return to the discredited politics of old — the grasping, greedy, ‘mé féinism’ that we had all prayed lay buried with Fianna Fáil’s political corpse.
Labour supporters who hoped that lessons had been learned from the Green party’s fatal dalliance with Fianna Fáil in government have been left reeling by the past week’s debacle as, it appears, history is again repeating itself.
While Labour entered into coalition with the express purpose of tempering the right-wing excesses of Fine Gael, the party has now, for all intents and purposes, been subsumed by its larger partner and, following Ms Shortall’s dramatic resignation, it is patent that there is no real difference between the parties.
Since entering government the Labour party has endorsed and defended a succession of vicious attacks on the most vulnerable in society and, incredibly, has now stood over the most blatant example of parish pump politics since John O’Donoghue was Minister for Sport and Tourism.
The big question is why? Why did Eamon Gilmore, and a plethora of Labour TDs, decide to, en masse, divest themselves of any remaining shred of credibility and try to tell the Irish people that Dr Reilly’s personal interference in a transparent method of assigning health services was anything other than it appeared, stroke politics? One by one they trotted out to defend the indefensible, using tired platitudes and pathetic excuses to try to rationalise Dr Reilly’s usurpation of the priority list of primary care centres to ensure that his own constituency benefited most from the process.
Mr Gilmore declared himself to be “very disappointed” by Ms Shortall’s shock resignation, despite his back-stabbing acting as a catalyst for her departure, while Alex White, who has the invidious task of replacing his colleague in the department of health, and who was out of the country last week and, evidently, staying in a cave, gave the Manuel defence — ‘I know nothing’.
“I don’t have any reason to assume that anybody has acted improperly or otherwise in the public interest,” he said, appealing for people to move on and for the toxic controversy to be buried out at sea under a mountain of lead.
Even as Dr Reilly’s explanation, for the selection of the 15 locations he added to the list, changed with every passing day, the justifications being spouted by his Labour party defenders remained constant.
Incredibly, the only senior Government figures who publicly expressed disquiet about Dr Reilly’s shameless stroke were his Fine Gael ministerial colleagues, Leo Varadkar and Lucinda Creighton.
“In respect of the location for these primary care centres, I think we certainly need to see more clarity from the minister — that’s obvious,” said Ms Creighton.
Well, it’s not obvious to the Labour party, which has now confirmed that it will make no request at government level for Dr Reilly to further explain the criteria he used when doling out primary care centres like party favours.
Which brings us back to Ms Shortall, and her parting shot at her former ministerial colleagues, and those party members who opted for self-preservation over principles, when she wondered: “If the Labour Party isn’t about allocation of resources according to need . . . what is it about?”
Of course, we know what Labour says it’s all about — according to its website it vows to, “continue to forward new ideas and policies on our vision for a fairer and better Ireland, for a fair society that is built on a prosperous and sustainable economy, personal liberty and social solidarity” — but, thus far at least, its words and deeds have been entirely contradictory.
While the Shortall fiasco has been painted as some kind of clear and present danger to the very existence of the government, prompting Mr Gilmore to opt to save the coalition over his ministerial colleague, in truth it was a chance for the party to eek out some small measure of identity within this administration and remind people what Labour is supposed to stand for — equality and accountability being high on that list.
Having been lambasted for a succession of cuts to services for the most vulnerable — like the targeting of disabled children in the last budget, or the hastily aborted decision to remove 428 teachers from the most disadvantaged schools in the country — this was a perfect opportunity for Labour to restore some of its rapidly eroding integrity in office.
Perhaps relations around the cabinet table would have been a bit frosty but here was a golden opportunity for Labour, without any requirement for any economic outlay, to draw a clear line of demarcation between itself and Fine Gael in government and demonstrate that its pre-election promises were more than mere empty sloganeering.
Instead it opted to close ranks and, with its mealy-mouthed excuses, insult the collective intelligence of the people of this country. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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