Elaine Loughlin: Statesman Simon's good faith met with stinging criticism

A claxon may have sounded on Simon Harris’s campaign to lead in good faith, but it’s an alarm the opposition has no intention on heeding. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

The booming claxon roused a number of zoned-out TDs straight up in their seats.

A malfunction in the clerk of the Dáil’s system, that dictates the speaking time allocated to each TD, was the source of the alarm, prompting a few confused looks from backbenchers.

It was about as eventful as Simon Harris’s first session in the Taoiseach’s hot seat got, to the disappointment of a packed media gallery.

Last week, Harris was all about new energy; this week he is all about a new positivity and extending a hand across the Chamber, which even went as far as praising the opposition.

The TikTok Taoiseach may want to take a grown-up approach but his opponents won’t be letting him forget the failings of his ministerial youth. In asking Mary Lou McDonald to join him in a new era of “engaging in good faith”, Harris suggested she acknowledge the “progress in a short period” on “very significantly” reducing the number of people waiting more than four months for scoliosis surgery.

She was quick to school the young leader on the reality of his legacy in health.

“Scoliosis is a debilitating and painful condition for a person’s spine twists and curves. It can cause the rib cage to press against the lungs and internal organs making it increasingly difficult to breathe,” she said.

Harris, after all, was the Health Minister who back in 2017, promised that by the end of that year, no child would wait longer than four months for scoliosis surgery.

“That was seven years ago and that promise has been broken again and again. That promise made by the Taoiseach then was broken.”

She added that Harris had failed to build the capacity needed and reminded him that, in 2019, he ended the scheme through which children could travel abroad to have operations faster.

Using his own words against him, she said: “The only good faith that matters on this subject is the good faith of the Government. That is the issue.”

But Harris wasn’t giving up that quickly. The Taoiseach deployed more flattery when Holly Cairns, in raising abortion care, moved to remind him of another one of his legacy issues.

Harris, while ignoring requests to pin down a date for the introduction of the remaining recommendations of a review of abortion services, acknowledged the “quite responsible” questioning. 

He said he accepted the “constructive” points made about the three-day waiting period, the issue of how doctors feel with respect to the criminal justice system, and fatal foetal abnormalities. But Cairns wasn’t being cajoled by the conciliatory words.

“The Government has been sitting on the expert report that pointed out these problems for 12 months. Instead of action, we have had a game of political pass the parcel.”

There were fewer words of encouragement when Joan Collins took to her feet. She again raised his record.

Six years after repeal and a more than 12 months after a review of abortion services, “we are still waiting for the Government to stop sitting on its hands”, she said. Refusing to admit defeat, Harris searched for whatever bit of positivity he could find and told Collins that he accepted the “sincerity of her view”.

A claxon may have sounded on Harris’s campaign to lead in good faith, but it’s an alarm the opposition has no intention on heeding.