Varadkar challenge - Taoiseach can’t have it both ways

The gentlest nudge will topple the proudest citadel if it is built on sand but it is too early to characterise Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar’s provocative intervention in the penalty points row yesterday as that decisive, domino-affect nudge.

It was nevertheless commendably independent-minded and a long overdue head-above-the-parapet statement of the obvious from inside Cabinet. It is easier though to suggest that the positions of two of the main players in this melodrama — Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan — are built on sand.

Mr Varadkar’s suggestion — it was stronger than that really — that Mr Callinan withdraw comments he made at the Dáil Public Accounts Committee hearing, in which he described the actions of vindicated whistleblowers Maurice McCabe and John Wilson as “disgusting”, is both the easiest and most difficult to deal with.