Irish Examiner view: Zappone saga a failure of political leadership

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney attended a committee meeting over the Katherine Zappone saga. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

The ongoing controversy over the appointment of Katherine Zappone as a UN envoy has all the dreary drama of a Netflix series that has dragged on a season too long. 

In July, Irish Examiner Political Editor Daniel McConnell broke the story and it quickly became a political controversy. The reason it is still on the news agenda is because of a failure of political leadership.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has lost credibility by amending his response with every new revelation.

It is not credible that Ms Zappone was not lobbying for the job and that Mr Coveney did not see it that way. 

How would she have been mistaken in her belief that she had been offered the job last March, as Mr Coveney told the Oireachtas committee? 

It is also not credible for him to define his actions merely as ‘sloppiness’, considering he deleted texts associated with the furore, an action which has raised concerns over this Government's commitment, or lack thereof, to transparency.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s behaviour has been little better; he  clearly saw nothing wrong with appointing Ms Zappone when he attended a celebratory event she organised at Dublin’s Merrion Hotel in July. 

More recently, the indifference he showed to the 35,000 people employed in the events sector by attending a music festival in London last Saturday seemed to be the actions of a political leader who doesn’t care.

The pair have put Taoiseach Micheál Martin in a position where he cannot win; his leadership over the whole affair appears to the public chaotic or weak. 

Despite his utterances of support for his Cabinet colleagues, privately he will be seething. 

This is far from the first time he has been undermined in a brutal, public way, since becoming Taoiseach little over a year ago. 

He should stick to his guns on declining to sack Mr Coveney, but by barely appearing to rebuke him in public he plays into opposition hands, gleefully seeking to destabilise his Government.

His defence of the Tánaiste’s attendance at the Mighty Hoopla music festival on Saturday hasn't helped matters.

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It is essential for this Government that Mr Martin gets to focus on doing his job. Otherwise, he could be out of a job quicker than one could say ‘Mary Lou McDonald’. 

The behaviour of the Government's most visible political leaders over this whole affair gives the Sinn Féin leader a free pass to knock the Government's housing aspirations, reopening society, and resurgent economy off the agenda and put the focus back on political infighting.

Ms McDonald has called on Mr Martin “to act on his acceptance that what Minister Simon Coveney did was wrong and apply appropriate sanctions”. 

Otherwise, she warned, her party will, by which she means a Dáil vote of no confidence in Mr Coveney. 

As he faces into an angry party review, it’s a political maelstrom Mr Martin could do without.