Reshuffle produces a Cabinet full of botch-job cowboys

OH, when cringe and current affairs combine to produce the perfect picture of the political zeitgeist.

Such an occurrence happened as Ministers Michael Ring and Pascal Donoghue posed for one of the silliest looking photo stunts of recent times.

But as well as making the would-be duo from Dodge look, well, dodgy, it also served as a most fitting portrait of the botched reshuffle, as this tired Coalition heads wearily into the buffers of the summer recess.

The snap-shot summed up the shake-up perfectly as: Women were excluded from the picture completely; the ministers wore ill-suited hats; and the image left most observers thinking, “Seriously? That’s my new ‘relaunched’ Government?”

Ironically, the re-jigging of the minister of state ranks would probably have been more successful if Enda Kenny had just picked the names out of one of the cowboy hats as, at least then, women TDs would have stood some chance of making the Fine Gael cut.

One thing Mr Kenny loves is his native tongue. Surely he could not mess up the Gaeltacht Department and turn it into a weird metaphor for the sloppiness and drive-by incompetence of this Coalition?

But, oh dear, that’s just what he did.

Appointing one minister to the portfolio with no Irish would raise eyebrows, appointing two with no Irish raises hackles amongst Gaelgóir, but doing that and then leaving the third minister in the department — the only one who can actually speak Irish — with no reasonability for Gaeltacht affairs raises fears Mr Kenny did all this in his sleep.

But the Taoiseach had woken up by the time he had to explain himself to the Dáil as he hit on the fantastic excuse that the bizarre decision was all a cunning plan which would encourage others to follow the new ministers and start to learn Irish themselves.

Leaving aside the fact the native tongue of most Irish people, especially the young, is dictated by makey-upey “reality” shows like Jersey Shore, rather than the rich linguistic traditions of the Connemara shore, this was quite the most desperate fig leaf possible with which to try and cover his political embarrassment.

So, we appoint ministers to the Gaeltacht Department with no Irish to encourage others to learn — does that mean that the whole of Cabinet Government is now just a structured reality self-help TV opportunity?

If Mr Kenny’s strange logic is to be expanded upon, does that not mean we should have an illiterate Education Minister whose public struggle to learn to read and write will inspire others?

We could also have a xenophobic Foreign Affairs Minister who overcomes an irrational hatred to lovingly accept other nationalities as equals.

And why not a pacifist Defence Minister who eventually learns that, sometimes, the only answer is organised, state-funded, violence?

Or, maybe, Mr Kenny just did not pay enough attention to this reshuffle to even avoid the most obvious of self-inflicted wounds?

His treatment of women was astounding — not a single post out of the nine juniors available.

True, Mr Kenny did double the number of FG women in Cabinet but when that takes the grand total to two, it is not so impressive — especially in the week in which Ireland’s state-sponsored trashing of women’s rights in everything from the lack of the right to choose what happens to their own bodies to their patronising place in the constitution has been highlighted by the United Nations.

Almost Mr Kenny’s first utterance as Taoiseach was a pledge to be implicitly sexist with the phrase: “Paddy likes to know what’s going on.”

Mrs Paddy now knows there is nothing going on for her in the Taoiseach’s head, as women just do not seem to matter there.

Same with children as Mr Kenny said he was creating a special Cabinet department for them because policy in that area would be a priority. And yet, not only is the role so important that we now have the third Children’s Minister in three months, but that job has been given to Dr Disaster himself, James Reilly.

Oh, Mr Kenny, have the children of Ireland not already suffered enough?

The reshuffle also threw up the bizarre re-alignment of the Defence portfolio with Agriculture.

Now, unless there is some massive, secret, fertilisers explosive initiative going on, this would not seem the most obvious of amalgamations.

It only works in the context of Simon Coveney being bought off with a few tanks to play with after not being elevated from the Agriculture brief.

How the rise of arch leadership rival Leo Varadkar must have rankled with Mr Coveney as he pondered the move.

Simon (sad voice): “Leo got Health, that’s a real promotion for him.”

Simon (happy voice): “Leo got Health, that’s a real danger for him.”

At least farmers will be pleased Mr Coveney is going nowhere as they could truly not wish for a better champion.

For it was Mr Coveney who lobbied Michael Noonan so effectively that the finance minister ignored advice from his officials and gave farmers a €26m tax exemption windfall.

Nice to know that the country is so flush again. Well, money for some, not for others, it would seem.

Certainly not enough cash for people with rare and severe disabilities as the Neurology Alliance and other hard pressed charities are forced to cut front line help due to a miserly slashing of €1.2m in funding — less than 5% of what the farmers were given back in the tax break.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin said the disability cut “lacked heart”.

Mr Kenny replied by attacking the last FF government for cutting the Christmas bonus for the disabled (if this is so relevant why has the Taoiseach not restored the payment after three years in power?) before going on to blandly bleat about an appeals process being “the route I suggest to follow”.

Nothing heartless about that response, eh, Enda?

It all goes to show that we do not need silly pictures to remind us that this Cabinet is full of botch-job cowboys.