Ladybird Book stuff from Collins, but Mr Men from Enda

WHEN poor judgement meets rich hypocrisy you know you are in one of those strange political spats that seem uniquely Irish.

The joke is worth retelling after the damaging way he handled the Niall Collins affair which has brought up all the old doubts about his suitability for power.

Mr Collins is the justice spokesperson who tried to intervene in the justice system in order to spare a convicted drug dealer a prison term.

The Limerick TD insists that he acted out of compassion due to the exceptional nature of the case as he wanted the judge to be aware of the tragic circumstances of the mother of the convicted man’s four children having taken her own life earlier this year.

This defence only holds water if Mr Collins was the only person able to tell the presiding judge about the awful situation, but, of course, such a major factor in the drug dealer’s personal circumstances would have been presented in many other forms.

Though an effective and combative opposition spokesman in general, this leaves Mr Collins’ actions to be at best extraordinarily naive.

And given that justice is the most chaotic department in government after health, can we really risk having a justice minister capable of being extraordinarily naive put in charge of it?

Mr Martin seems to think we can and, despite insisting no TD should do what Mr Collins did, he will not remove him from his post.

As RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke put it to Mr Collins at his most withering yesterday: “This was Ladybird Book stuff,” as in, even a child should know not to try and influence a judge presiding over a court case, especially after the long, ugly, history of such interventions by politicians.

Misjudgement then compounded misjudgement as Mr Collins went into hiding and haughtily announced he would make no comment until sentencing in the case in October.

Yeah, right, we’ll all forget about it until the autumn then.

But maybe instead of Ladybird Books, we should concentrate on the Mr Men.

Because, after Mr Indecisive failed to deal with Mr Naive, in pops Enda Kenny, aka Mr Hypocrite, to the story.

Perhaps he is so punch drunk from being embroiled in every botch-up going lately, that when Mr Kenny saw another car-crash controversy coming towards him he could not resist jumping in.

Fresh from stuffing the banking inquiry with an in-built government majority after promising voters a “democratic revolution”, the Taoiseach treated us to a thundering performance in which he demolished what he called the “shadow justice minister” for attempting to directly intervene in the judicial process.

Now, clearly it was pretty dumb for the “shadow” justice minister to do that, but this would be the same Mr Kenny who did not utter a peep of concern when the man he made the real justice minister, Alan Shatter, was found to have actually broken the law.

While very different to the Collins’ controversy, this occurred after Mr Shatter used confidential information given to him by then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan to ambush a political opponent on live TV — again with no reprimand from the Taoiseach.

Mr Shatter is now using a legal challenge to seek to overturn the ruling by Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes that he broke the law and, separately, it will also be interesting to see if the former justice minister repeats his incendiary denunciation that the Guerin report, which finally did for him, was a “fundamentally flawed kangaroo court” outside the protection of Dáil privilege.

When Mr Shatter misrepresented a garda whistleblower in the Dáil — and failed to correct his statement for several months— and when Mr Callinan branded the actions of that whistleblower “disgusting” at an Oireachtas committee, Mr Kenny was also strangely silent.

But when it is an opposition TD in the wrong, suddenly you cannot shut Enda up.

And it must be said, Mr Kenny’s bombastic broadside did finally force Mr Martin and Mr Collins out of their bunkers.

However, it was a strategic error not to switch Mr Collins away from justice.

It is not even as if the Limerick TD would have had to languish on the backbench, as Fianna Fáil is too reduced in numbers to have one, so everybody gets a spokespersonship.

But not having a backbench also means you can’t really have a front bench, just a bench (insert joke here about the FF bench also being a bit wooden and weather-worn).

Mr Martin could have turned the situation to his advantage by looking, well, decisive and imposing a code of conduct on all his TDs, banning them from writing to judges in future — not merely waiting for other parties to act with him — but instead we just had a limp, insipid statement that made him look weak.

It was a blunder because Mr Martin had a strong run of late, with his intervention in the whistleblower saga triggering the Guerin report, and his hammering of the Government on the medical card cull making Mr Kenny very uncomfortable.

The Taoiseach’s inability to get a grip on this self-imposed calamity was on show again when he mused on the 5,000 medical cards snatched away because recipients did not reply to the HSE during the review, admitting: “I know for instance of a couple of cases in which people with motor neurone disease were asked by the computer to respond. They were unable to speak and move and therefore could not respond.”

So, that’s it then? “Computer says no,” as the gruff, rude and uncaring character in Little Britain always used to respond when confronted with a heart-rending plea for help.

It was not the Cabinet’s fault, it was the computer’s, according to Mr Kenny.

But what else would you expect from the characters in Little Ireland, the Ladybird book of governance as reimagined by the Brothers Grimm and presided over by the Mr Men?