Daniel McConnell: Varadkar needs to deliver change to a broken system
Stephen Teap outside the High court in Dublin. The HSE and two US laboratories have admitted liability in the case of mother-of-two Irene Teap who died after being diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Fine Gael held its annual Christmas drinks for the media in Dublin on Wednesday night.
These events can be awkward affairs as the minister or senior TD who you have turned over recently will be in close proximity and tensions from time to time can boil over.
This year’s event was more sedate and proved a useful exercise in taking the temperature of the troops ahead of the changeover of Taoiseach this day next week.
With Leo Varadkar very much in the news this week, it was interesting to hear the view of one of his loyalists as to his thinking.
“Leo is a confidence player, when he is up, he is very high,” said the TD. “When he is low, he can get very low and does suffer from bouts of insecurity.”
This comment resonated this week as Varadkar struck a very conciliatory tone in his public appearances, which were far removed from his usual combative and tribal form.
At the launch of his White Paper on Enterprise, he admitted that the lack of housing is a serious “drag” on inward investment into Ireland.
Rather than simply talking up the progress made in terms of Housing for All and record building this year, he spoke expansively on the failure to keep pace with rising population numbers and was at pains to appear in tune with the pain being felt by people all over the country.
He admitted infrastructural deficits mean Ireland is “running up an escalator that is coming down at us”. “Our infrastructure is not up to scratch, and when you compare us to other European countries that’s clear,” he said, adding they were “rich for a lot longer than us”.
Then in the Dáil on Thursday during Leaders’ Questions Varadkar conceded that Ireland’s housing shortage is a “very deep social crisis” and a “very deep personal crisis” for those caught up in it.
Again, the shift in tone was notable, and gone was the sometimes bullish and tribal Varadkar who has more than put the boot into the opposition, Sinn Féin in particular.
Whatever the reason, the sight of the Government showing a more empathic front is welcome, given the ongoing cruelty the State inflicts on some of its weakest people.
I was chatting to a former Government advisor during the week about the realities of being in office.
He said his preconceptions of how things happen when he took up his post were shattered by what he said is the truly shambolic and chaotic nature of how things run in Irish government.
After many years in office, he said his experience universally was that when things went wrong, it was far more likely to be in the realm of a mistake and not a conspiracy.
I said I accepted that but up to a point.
Sadly, there are far too many examples of the State and its agents who continue, despite so many examples of inane cruelty to some of the weakest members of society, to add to the pain of its own citizens.
Listening to Stephen Teap’s eloquent statement on the steps of the Four Courts on Thursday, one got the latest reminder of just how cruel and cold the State can be.
“At every turn obstacles were put in my way by the HSE and the laboratories who misread Irene’s smears. What was most important to me was to firstly get the answer to Irene’s question: how did this happen? Nobody answered this question when she got diagnosed with cancer, nor did they answer it when Irene died even though they had the results of those audits telling them clearly that the smears were misread,” he stated clearly.
Paying tribute to the late Vicky Phelan, who herself was so badly treated, Teap called on the Government to look to repair the damage done, as he is having to do with his young boys, Oscar and Noah.
As if the point couldn’t be any more blatant, the Dáil this week was debating the Patient Safety Bill, aimed at embedding a culture of open disclosure in our health and social services, as Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said.
However, as reported by my colleague Elaine Loughlin here in recent days, concerns were raised by Opposition TDs that the promise to protect patients was being watered down.
Former Labour leader Alan Kelly said during an emotional contribution that the Bill “doesn’t pass the Vicky test”.
He said that Teap and his fellow CervicalCheck campaigner Lorraine Walsh, did not support the Bill in its current form.
“We shouldn’t be here minister. This is rushed, so rushed. We got these 40-something pages of amendments on Friday. I want to support this Bill. We shouldn’t be here doing this like this. It’s just not good practice.”
“This is not open disclosure,” he added, while acknowledging that it was a difficult “balancing act” on what was “a very, very technical piece of legislation”.
Sensing the building opposition and backlash, Donnelly was forced to relent and agreed to amend the legislation.
But the genuine question has to be asked, how in God’s name, after everything that has happened, did we even end up in this position?
Why does the system, which purports to serve the people, resist doing the right thing?
Why can’t political promises made by the likes of Donnelly and Varadkar simply be allowed to stand and count?
And he was the Taoiseach of the country when he said that — and look what happened.
That is the power of the system. That is the legacy of the financial crash which has significantly strengthened the position of the permanent government at the expense of our elected leaders, who have been reduced to mere commentators in places.
When Varadkar is re-elected by the Dáil once again to the office of Taoiseach, he does so as the head of a majority government with the capacity to change and improve things.
One hopes that he uses the strength of that office to bring real change, and once and for all deliver a system that is citizen-focused, victim-focused, and not one consumed by the mantra of the ‘house always wins’.
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