Shatter ‘waved on’ with a licence to legislate

The Dáil road block holding up Alan Shatter leaves him damaged, but it will not result in him losing his licence to legislate.

Like the hot air he apparently blew into the breathalyser before asthma got the better of him, the no-confidence motion is unlikely to register anything of lasting significance.

Even those hoping for a more user-friendly minister to emerge from the mêlée are likely to be disappointed, because close colleagues believe Mr Shatter will not be standing for the Dáil again, and so intends to go out with a bang.

Having finally achieved his lifetime ambition in politics — to be put in charge of the judiciary and gardaí — Mr Shatter intends to concentrate on the wide-ranging reform agenda he has set himself.

Closing a major Garda station in his constituency is not the parish-pump action of a minister seeking to stay in the Dáil colleagues note, but that very move threw into sharp focus his flaws as well as his determination to get things done.

The Garda station closure programme makes strong rational and organisational sense — all very logical, as Mr Shatter’s Star Trek hero Spock might say — but he was unable to sell it to a sceptical public because the Garda Representative Association deployed a misleadingly emotional argument against the reform, which he lacked the ability to counter.

It was the same story with the referendum on inquiries, when Mr Shatter failed to challenge a rather weak, and again highly- emotive, argument from an angry legal profession that the Dáil would use powers of investigation to target individuals, rather than conduct the much-needed probes that are a mainstay of other legislatures such as Westminster and the US Congress.

Mr Shatter does not do emotion, he does subtle, so he is not going to see something like smearing a political opponent by using confidential information provided to him by the garda commissioner as any reason to change course now.

Almost as alarming, is the collective refusal of the Cabinet to offer criticism of his actions as they pretend not to be eye-witnesses to the political car crash occurring before them.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has tried to have it all ways by making muted comments that Garda records should not be made public without a conviction being involved, while at the same time offering Mr Shatter his full support.

This is partly due to the fact that however much the pair may spar over Israel; and on domestic issues, such as the X-case; Labour see Mr Shatter as a fellow liberal at the top table who they would be unhappy to see go and replaced by one of the more ardent social conservatives, such as thrusting Thatcherite, Leo Varadkar.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has attempted to be dismissive over the whole Asthmagate spectacle, but the sprawling nature of the allegations has at times caught him out.

It was most odd that the Taoiseach last Friday insisted he had not bothered to ask Mr Shatter whether he had invoked constitutional Dáil privilege to exit the breath test scene, yet was able to throw into the pot the new, and seemingly supportive, claim that the minister had attempted to blow into the bag twice.

Clearly, Mr Kenny has decided a course of selective curiosity is the safest for him in this rather unseemly matter as it unfolds further.

But at least he stuck to the core points of the affair and did not hurtle down distractionary avenues like Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte did when he claimed Mr Shatter was being accused of drink driving.

Mr Shatter has been accused of abuse of power, being arrogant, rude, and a hypocrite, but no one has seriously suggested he was tipsy at the wheel.

The Government has overwhelming numbers and will declare confidence in Mr Shatter, with even Independent TD Michael Lowry — himself no stranger to controversy or Dáil censure motions — saying he will back him.

In comments some may consider somewhat lacking in self-awareness, Mr Lowry noted: “Alan Shatter...was never the most popular member of the house. He can be irritatingly dismissive and brash. As a political practitioner, I can understand that after 30 years in the Dáil Minister Shatter is entitled to grasp his first appointment as minister with unbridled enthusiasm.”

As Mr Shatter is “waved on” from the Dáil roadblock, fasten your seatbelts, because the next three years will be an equally bumpy ride.