Robert Troy's demise began at a snail’s pace and finished like a tornado

Robert Troy. File Picture: Julien Behal

The 10-day journey of Robert Troy’s ministerial demise began at a snail’s pace and finished like a tornado.

However, despite the repeated backing the beleaguered Westmeath TD got from his party leader and Taoiseach Micheál Martin, his resignation became an inevitability the moment Eamon Ryan went on national radio to demand not one but two investigations into Mr Troy’s property dealings.

As one Government TD said, hours after Mr Ryan’s statement and shortly before Mr Troy fell on his own sword, “his colleagues just want it to go away, and at this stage they just want him to go away unfortunately”.

“That’s the political route he chose. It’s a cruel one. Because none of us believe he’ll last long enough to make a statement to any committee, or to defend himself in the Dáil.” 

Could it have been different for the junior minister at the Department of Enterprise?

Yes it probably could have been. His initial reaction had been to ignore the story completely, before defending himself on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne. 

At that stage only one missing property declaration – involving a house in Mullingar he sold to Westmeath County Council in 2018 – was known about.

Mr Troy admitted his mistake, but he wasn’t volunteering any further information. He should have while he had the chance. He wasn’t seen again on the airwaves for nearly two weeks.

By then umpteen other issues had emerged, including that he had ‘flipped’ a house he bought from a Fianna Fáil councillor in Longford within three months, again selling to a local authority, and doubled his money. That was another transaction he failed to declare.

An extraordinary statement last Thursday, outlining seven mistakes in his declarations and voluntarily offering a further eight – only served to pose yet more questions. One of the volunteered facts is that he had been renting his former private residence at Ballynacargy in Westmeath since last year. This paper subsequently revealed he hadn’t registered the tenancy – a legal requirement.

On and on, the revelations and ineptitude continued.

By the time he went on RTÉ Radio to face a grilling from Brian Dobson and admit that he owns 11 properties – nine of them rentals – in the middle of the biggest housing crisis any of us has ever seen, Mr Troy’s goose was cooked.

At that stage the opposition had finally awoken from its slumber to denounce the scandal in a crescendo of indignation, and Mr Troy was being pursued by television reporters in scenes we’re more used to seeing beamed to us from Downing Street.

There were more stories to come.

Will it have much of an effect on the Government? Really it shouldn’t, though neither the Taoiseach nor the Tánaiste have come out of the episode smelling of roses.

Both had backed Mr Troy to the hilt, and repeatedly, which suggests their political antennae need some tuning. 

You can’t have a housing crisis like this one and a landlord minister acting in any sort of non-transparent way in terms of their property dealings – there's only one way for it to end.

Still though, the story was a fairly self-contained little imbroglio.

The real effect it may have is to make the nearly 50% of TDs who are also landlords feel very nervous.

What happened to Mr Troy could have happened to a lot of them. It may still.