Cabinet ignoring the headline issues on their return

The new political season may be under way with the Cabinet reassembling, but coalition chiefs were only concerned about putting on a new face mask for the unreal political world they inhabit says Political Correspondent, Shaun Connolly

PLANES, strains, and automatons dominated as the new political season dawned. Suddenly, the nation was no longer leaderless as the Cabinet reassembled while the Dáil continued on in its well-deserved two month long summer break.

Not that the Cabinet actually did anything mind, except live up to its reputation as a sit down session for political automatons — which the dictionary defines as “robots that behave, or respond, in a mechanical way.”

Health Minister Leo Varadkar briefed colleagues on the shocking case of Ms Y, but he was at pains to stress the discussion would only be about her specific engagements with the HSE.

The wider controversy of how a teenage, immigrant rape victim ended-up on hunger strike because she was refused a termination in Ireland, was ignored.

Ms Y’s asylum seeker status and lack of resources meant she could not join the thousands of Irish women forced to make the lonely journey to seek a termination in Liverpool and Birmingham each year, and again the Cabinet just ignored that on-going situation as well.

Despite the Ms Y case once again making the lack of termination rights for women a talking point in every home in the country — whether against or in favour of the highly-restrictive status quo — not a word about it was to be heard in Cabinet where Labour refuses to push the issue, despite opinion polls showing a majority support for a constitutional referendum on allowing rape victims and women with fatal foetal abnormalities to be able to seek a termination in their own country.

Instead of facing-up to the real world the rest of us live in, coalition chiefs were more concerned about putting on a new face mask for the unreal political world they inhabit.

Thus Joan Burton, Michael Noonan, and Brendan Howlin fanned-out across the airwaves on Wednesday like the Three Amigos of Austerity strumming their sounds of coalition harmony and economic rigidity.

Keen to dispel the notion she would strain the Coalition to breaking point as Tánaiste, Ms Burton has clearly undergone something of a transformation that even Professor Henry Higgins would have been proud of achieving with Eliza Doolittle.

Not so much My Fair Lady, more Welfare Lady, as the Joan of old who would often go slightly rogue was replaced by the very voice of economic conservatism.

It was the same extreme caution the Social Protection Minister deployed in the Labour leadership race, but it could prove a dangerous redirection as Ms Burton faced little opposition in that contest, and emerging back onto the media scene like a graduate from the summer school of robo-politics could disarm her of the very edge that has previously given her a connection with disillusioned Labour voters and aided the party’s poll bounce since taking over.

Fellow amigo Mr Noonan even managed to keep a straight face when he vowed he had absolutely no intention of trying to buy the next general election.

This would be the same Mr Noonan who was so desperate to purchase any available ballot box possible he used the launch of Fine Gael’s manifesto for the May local elections to announce tax cuts for middle and lower income earners. Hmmmm.

But the most extraordinary Cabinet admission of the week came from Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan as she proved to be the essence of mechanical, robot thinking by declaring she was too “inexperienced” to even have an opinion on whether it was a good idea to spend €3million — €4m repairing the Gulfstream IV jet Ministers love to lounge on.

When pressed by this column on whether she would support such spending on the jet, Ms O’Sullivan, said: “I don’t think I’m in a position to be able to answer.

“I don’t think I’m an experienced, senior enough minister as yet, or experienced long enough as a senior minister, to be able to answer that question because I genuinely have not used it.”

It was a curious response as the Limerick TD, 63, has sat at the Cabinet table for nearly three years, first in the housing portfolio, and now in charge of education.

Yet she is seemingly so inexperienced she is unable to decide whether that €4m might be better spent, say, replacing some of the special needs assistant places slashed by this Government because she has not actually sat on the flashy plane herself.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald gave a more assured — and double dealing — performance as she said she “understood” public anger at such costs, but could support the spending if that proved the “safest” way for Ministers to travel.

Well, splurging all that cash repairing a jet most people see as a left-over luxury from the blingtastic Bertie bubble era would certainly make it less safe for Ministers to be seen slumming it — heaven forbid — in business class with the plebs.

In its first three years in power, the private jet travel by Ministers in this Government has left taxpayers with a €4.4m bill.

But, strangely, British prime minister David Cameron does not feel the need for a private plane to whisk him around the globe despite running one of the world’s bigger economic and military powers.

However, Irish ministers, running a country with the population of Yorkshire, do feel the need for two such jets as the Lear is on hand when one gets bored with the Gulfstream.

Indeed, for his first meeting as PM with US president Barack Obama, Mr Cameron took a commercial flight to Washington DC, yet here there is even talk of splashing out €40m for a replacement for the Gulfstream.

Only a death-wish government would dare try to get that idea off the runway with a general election looming, so maybe it would be better to get ahead of the curve and just retire both jets now?

But then you can imagine the robotic response from this bunch of automatons: “Computer says No.”