We can breathe easy with Howlin and Shatter in charge

SO, Irish body politics has been diagnosed with severe asthma.

From the Greek for ‘panting’, asthma is described as a “common, chronic inflammatory disease of the airways”.

The national airwaves have been clogged up with all kinds of unpleasantness emanating from politicians in recent days.

Public Expenditure Reform Minister, Brendan Howlin, tried to wave goodbye to Croke Park/Choke Park/Broke Park* (*emphasise name according to prejudice) and delivered us the snappily tilted “Haddington Road Agreement”, instead.

However, Dublin cartography enthusiasts will know this city-centre location as Beggars Bush — and Beggars Banquet would be a more fitting name for the scrappy deal.

After abandoning so many of the Government’s red lines, Mr Howlin announced he had achieved workplace “peace”.

It was an eerie phrase, not quite reminiscent of Britain’s appeasement prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, returning from the Munich conference of 1938 to declare “peace in our time”, but if the Beggars-Can’t-Be-Choosers-Bandage-Bundle holds together, it will have been bought by driving a coach and horses through the Coalition’s claims it can reform the public service.

Given the concessions, Mr Howlin would have been more accurate to declare he had returned from the Haddington Road haggle with: “Peace in our double time”.

He called it this Government’s “last ask” on public-sector workers, but Mr Howlin knew a wave of strikes and unrest, following on from the rejection of the previous offer, could have been the last gasp for the Coalition.

Hence, the abandonment of the harder line and the delusional declaration he could still achieve €300m in savings, this year, from the public payroll bill.

Who did the maths for Mr Howlin on that one — James Reilly?

Reilly is, of course, the numbers genius of this Government. He allowed the health overspend to spiral out of control to such an extent he has been placed under acute observation by the IMF, who now track his every penny.

But, then, giving an €18bn health budget to a fellow well-known for his forecasting abilities might have been a tad ambitious. Reilly on the National Children’s Hospital: “Sure, we’ll get it done by 2017, or maybe 2018-ish. Oh OK, 2020 any good to you? 2021?”

Reilly on universal healthcare: “It’s a programme for government commitment — defo by the end of this parliament. Or, maybe the end of the next parliament, but certainly half way through the parliament after that — tops.”

It is extraordinary that no-one in Irish public life bats an eyelid that Reilly has been exposed as a debtor who has not complied with a High Court ruling, yet sits in a Cabinet about to seize money from the wages and dole cheques of the ‘little people’ who run up property tax debts.

Just look how Dr Reilly has let political ‘asthma’ surge out of control around the Cabinet table.

We have dear old Minister for Injustice Alan Shatter to thank for bringing the disease to such public attention, as, despite previously stating asthma did not affect him, he now informs us it stopped him completing a breathalyser test, when asked to do so by the gardaí.

In another contribution to the tarnishing of politics in the public mind, he also delighted us with a new phrase — the Shatapology.

This is a curious linguistic device by which the erroneous party sort of says ‘sorry’ to the injured party, but is only sorry that the latter did not recognise the brilliance of the former during the exchange that prompted the Shatapology.

Almost as grimly amusing to watch was the idea of Willie O’Dea taking the moral high ground over the issue of whether Mr Shatter should have publicly shafted Mick Wallace by revealing he had roadside penalty points waived by gardaí.

This would be the same Mr O’Dea who was forced to resign as defence minister after it emerged he had given a false affidavit, to the High Court, that had smeared a political opponent.

With Mr Shatter also occupying the role of military man in Government, at least there is some consistency in having such overly defensive defence ministers.

And it might be well for Mr Shatter to remember, as he faces into a no-confidence vote, that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.

His car-crash approach to the penalty points scandal has left him seeing events swerve dangerously out of his control.

And it is also interesting to remember that Mr O’Dea initially survived the vote of no-confidence in him, once the false affidavit came to light.

It was his appallingly arrogant behaviour during the debate, and its aftermath, that did for him and forced him from office.

That sorry spectacle should now sound some alarm bells for Mr Shatter, as the unusual affair of his non-breath test threatens to drive on into a second week.

Mr Shatter is in danger of finding out that those who live by the political smear can also die by the political smear.

So many questions remain unanswered over his date with destiny — but by not blowing into a breathalyser, on Pembroke Street all those years ago, this saga could yet surge into a number of different directions.

If the garda report on the incident emerges, and there is no Pembroke Street Agreement between the two accounts, Mr Shatter may be back writing raunchy sex novels sooner than we thought.

While his loss from high office would hardly be literature’s gain, it could well ease the symptoms of political asthma that have left the Coalition wheezing.

Strangely, after Mr Shatter was unable to complete his breath test, he was not asked to go to a garda station to give a sample of urine.

But, then, this should hardly surprise us, as Mr Shatter has always been better at taking the urine than giving it.