Michael Clifford: ‘Golfgate’ politicians left to languish in the rough
Some feared the worst when George Foreman began trending on social media last weekend.
Oh no, the lovable old boxer must have popped his clogs. When celebrities long disappeared from public life, and known to be in advanced years, suddenly trend on Twitter, it’s usually to mark their passing.
Not this time. George was trending because his signature grill was among the nuggets tumbling out from the sorry affair known as Golfgate.
The grill had been one of the prizes for the Oireachtas Golf Society competition that preceded what will go down in the annals of Irish politics as a meal to rank up there with The Last Supper.
Within days of the Irish Examiner breaking the story, Golfgate was making such an impact on the public consciousness that every little detail down to the specifics of the prizes on offer was being parsed on all media platforms.
The George Foreman Grill was won by Phil Hogan, the now ex-EU commissioner, political heavyweight and avid golfer. He was presented with it at the dinner in Clifden’s Station House Hotel on the evening of Wednesday 19 August.
A few hours earlier, across the country in Dublin, the Department of Health issued the latest daily figures from the Covid 19 pandemic. Two people infected with the virus had died, bringing the Covid related death count in the state to 1,775. The daily total for new infections was 54, amounting to 27,547 infections in all.
Irish political scientists will in time long mull over what was going through the minds of the 81 attendees at the Oireachtas Golf Society dinner in the Station House Hotel that evening. The large function room had been partitioned in two as a cursory nod to the prevailing restrictions on gatherings under public health guidelines.
How did this arrangement sit with one of the attendees, Mr Justice Seamus Woulfe, recently appointed to the Supreme Court bench? He was the attorney general in the cabinet that formulated guidelines in the last months of the previous cabinet. Did he wonder at all whether the partition was sufficient to comply with the law? Did he mull over where the spirit, not to mind letter, of the law stood on the partition?
Most of the attendees had spent a chunk of their adult lives in politics. They were former ministers, TDs and senators. One crucial element of the make-up of any politician is a capacity to surf the public mood and stay afloat.
Did any among them stop for a brief second, look around the room and say to themselves – “wow, this better not get out”.
Perhaps the answers to those questions can be divined from the invitations sent out for the event. The invites issued through the society’s captain, Independent TD Noel Grealish, made absolutely no mention of the pandemic convulsing the world. This event, as such, was cocooned from a populace that was exhausted, scared and even traumatised by months of living with an indiscriminate, deadly virus.
As the dinner was progressing on its merry way, back in Dublin the acting chief medical officer Ronan Glynn released a video. Its purpose was to attempt to clarify new restrictive measures introduced by the government the previous day.
The virus was on the road again, heading for the foothills of another surge. More pain was required to restrain it, more curtailing of movements, less opportunity to find solace in socialisation or sports or the arts.
The Government’s attempts to communicate the measures had been confused and cack-handed. Dr Glynn, bearing the countenance of the nation’s chief worrier, was trying to sort things out.
“At the heart of what we want to do is a very simple message,” he said on the recording.
“Please limit the number of people that you’re meeting up with over the next three weeks. Specifically, please focus on two key numbers, 6 and 15.
“Please do not have more than six people over to your house or garden and outside, no more than 15 people should meet up. And even then, people need to physically distance from one another. Please work from home if at all possible.”
After the dinner, the partition in the Station House Hotel function room was pulled back for the speeches, opening up the space to all 81 attendees. The main speaker was the Minister for Agriculture Dara Calleary.
He is not a golfer nor a member of the society. He was there solely to honour his political mentor, the late Mark Killilea, who had been a big wig in the society, and in whose momory this year’s event was being held.
Earlier in the day, Calleary had been on the radio trying to stem the tide of frustration that was rising over the new restrictions. He had patiently explained what the objective was, why we all had to pull together to beat this thing that was unending life as we know it.
He left the hotel after delivering his speech. As he walked into the Connemara night he may well have issued a sigh of relief that he had escaped.
It wasn’t his scene but he had felt obliged to honour his mentor. He couldn’t have known that he had just signed the death warrant on a ministerial career he had craved, been initially denied and ultimately embarked on just 36 days earlier.
Calleary’s presence at the dinner was crucial to what followed. He was a member of the Government that was tasked with navigating the country through the current crisis. In the public mind, the administration was all at sea.
Incoherence had been heaped upon controversy and confusion through the summer following the assembly of the three party government on 27 June. Some of the negative stuff could be attributed to bad luck, but a sense was washing through society that the bright, new shining coalition was drifting dangerously.
In the days preceding the dinner there had been confusion over the new restrictions and the prospective opening of schools; sour, disharmonious notes emerging from cabinet; a clumsy attempt by the Minister for Health Stephen Donnolly to convey the concept of risk for children by making comparisons with trampolines; questions over whether the Minister for Education Norma Foley was in hiding; further restrictions placed on Kildare as Laois and Offaly were set free.
Against this backdrop, woe betide any minister who was found in a compromising position that pointed to a “do as I say not as I do” attitude.
Arguably, if Calleary hadn’t been present that evening what followed would never have scaled the heights of outrage and change that ensued.
Aoife Grace Moore and Paul Hosford are political correspondents with the Irish Examiner. They are young, hungry and talented, but by any measure the speed at which they detected and assembled the story of the Oireachtas golf dinner was extraordinary.
At 7pm on Thursday, just 24 hours after the soup had been served in the Station House Hotel, the Irish Examiner published the story on its website. Almost immediately, the foul stuff came into violent contact with the air conditioning.
Calleary was gone by 7am on Friday. In his resignation letter to the Taoiseach, he apologised in particular to the health care workers and their families whose jobs he had inadvertently made more difficult.
“While I mean that apology most sincerely, it is not sufficient and accordingly I am tendering my resignation to you as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.”
Jerry Buttimer, Leas Cathaoirleach of the Seanad followed within hours. Party whips were removed from the seven Fianna Fail and Fine Gael senators. Later, long time FF stalwart and president of the Oireachtas Golf Society, Donie Cassidy, resigned as party vice president.
Calleary also stepped down as deputy leader and party vice president. As Friday progressed it became obvious that the anger unleashed by the story was visceral.
Anger has been a key feature of politics and public life since the economic collapse of 2008. The failure of the prevailing politics to properly address the needs of large sections of society has fuelled this anger.
On social media, anger has been a tool in the growing tide of different strands of populism washing across the world. Some of it is real, more exaggerated, and more again manufactured.
Often, anger spluttered on Twitter and phone-in radio shows is not reflective of wider feelings, but still impacts on the political culture.
The anger in response to Golfgate was real and keenly felt. A society bursting with pent up frustration, suspicious of the “we’re all in this together” line and traumatised by the health, social and economic upheaval had had enough. Here was a stark, even brutal illustration that we were not all in this together, that there was one law for the so-called elite, and another for everybody else.
Over the weekend, the focus switched. With politicians falling on swords, the issue was no longer the Clifden conflab, but the manner in which some of the big cheeses still standing were addressing the fall-out.
Supreme Court judge Seamus Woulfe threw out a sort of an apology: “That I ended up in a situation where breaches may have occurred, is of great regret to me and for which I am sorry. I unreservedly apologise,” he said.
How did he “end up” in a situation where he attended the dinner? Was he drugged on the 18th hole, carted off to the function room and strapped into his chair?
On Monday, it was announced that the Supreme Court had asked retired chief justice Susan Denham to examine the issue as it pertained to Woulfe.
By then Big Phil had a big problem. On Sunday, the Taoiseach and Tanaiste asked him to “consider his position”, polite terminology for “on your bike”. That had been in response to news from the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris that Hogan had been stopped for using his phone while driving in Kildare the previous week.
He was cautioned on that occasion, rather than issued with a fixed charge notice. Many saw this as another example of one law for us, another for them? The leaders of FF and FG wanted him to provide a proper narrative of his movements at a time when he was supposed to be self-isolating like any other new arrival in the country.
The utterances of Martin and Varadkar should be seen in a wider context. Would either or both have gone as far as they did if their government hadn’t been mired in controversy, leaking credibility in the days leading up to the shindig?
There was some surprise expressed by commentators at what represented a gamble. If Hogan ultimately hung on, Martin and Varadkar would have looked weak after pushing so firmly.
Hogan’s boss, commission president Ursula Von der Leyen, asked him to sit down and write out all the big adventures he got up to when he went home to Ireland for his summer holiday.
He left out a few bits and pieces, such as a sighting of him at dinner in the K Club on his first night of scheduled self-isolation and maybe an excursion into the wilds of Roscommon.
That picture demonstrated why he had not come out with hands up begging forgiveness for all his sins in the immediate aftermath of the dinner. He couldn’t because there were too many sins, too many examples of how he acted as if he was above the restrictions.
Following that, it was all over bar the shouting. On Wednesday, he left before he was shown the door, mustering whatever grace was still available to him, clinging to the line that he broke no laws.
“I deeply regret my trip to Ireland – the country that I have been so proud to represent as a public servant for most of my adult life – caused such concern, unease and upset.”
So it went in a week during which everything changed. National anger may have gone someway towards restoring national confidence. The cost of the national interest in terms of political capital in Brussels remains to be seen.
An appropriate summing up of the week was offered on Thursday on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne. The WHO special envoy Dr David Nabarro was asked by Ms Byrne what he made of the outcome of the long week in Irish politics.
“There is something extraordinary about what happened in Ireland,” Mr Naborro said.
“It’s showing that this is a country where the same rules, the same law applies to everyone whether you’re a fabulous decision maker like Phil Hogan or you’re any ordinary person who is just minding their own business.”
He expressed admiration for Hogan’s work as EU trade commissioner and noted that he paid a terrible price.
“I’m so impressed that this idea of one rule for everybody is being applied in your country,” he said.
“So congratulations and commiserations in one breath.”
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