Irish Examiner view: Huge fallout from gamble on Jim Gavin

Jim Gavin withdrew from the campaign on Sunday night following controversy over €3,300 in rent which a former tenant of his claims he is still owed. Picture: Cillian Sherlock/PA

The shock departure of Jim Gavin from the presidential race is a mess of Micheál Martin’s own making, but the ramifications will be felt far beyond the personal and political implications for the Fianna Fáil leader.

Mr Gavin withdrew from the campaign on Sunday night following controversy over €3,300 in rent which a former tenant of his claims he is still owed.

In his statement, Mr Gavin admitted he made a mistake and would take steps to address the matter, and was stepping aside because of the potential impact of the ongoing campaign on his family and friends. But the statement left more questions than it answered.

The Taoiseach handpicked the former Defence Forces pilot and former manager of the Dublin football team. The perceived lack of a robust selection process angered and baffled many within his own party, and it was seen by political observers as an unwise gamble to select such a political novice to run in such a bruising public arena.

That gamble has backfired spectacularly and damaged not just Mr Martin and his party, but this sorry mess has also tarnished the office of Uachtaráin na hÉireann and the whole process of electing someone to that post. Mr Gavin has also been damaged — some of it self-inflicted.

Speaking on RTÉ last night, Mr Martin said he took “firm responsibility” for giving Mr Gavin his backing. However, he tried to distance himself from his role in selecting him as a candidate. He also countered direct criticism from within his own party and from the opposition about the lack of due diligence in the selection process.

Mr Martin insisted Mr Gavin was repeatedly asked as part of that process if he had ever had an issue with a tenant while he was a landlord.

“The answer was ‘no’,” Mr Martin said.

He said the €3,300 rent issue must have been “buried in the recess of Jim Gavin’s mind”.

He insisted he intends to lead the party into the next general election. But it’s clear he has a fight on his hands.

EU states should stand together

A political storm has engulfed France since president Emmanuel Macron called an inconclusive snap election last year, leaving the country’s parliament divided between three key blocs — the far-right, the left, and the centre — with no clear majority.

It also resulted yesterday in the dramatic resignation of Sébastien Lecornu, France’s third prime minister in less than a year, just hours after he appointed a new government, which was almost identical to that which he inherited from his predecessor, Francois Bayrou.

Blaming opposition parties who he said were behaving with “partisan attitudes” and were unwilling to compromise to allow the government to function, Lecornu was promptly pilloried by those same parties for backtracking on the “profound break” with past politics he promised when taking over from the unpopular Bayrou.

Sadly for France and the French people, the instability of the Macron presidency is playing into the hands of the culture war being waged on Europe by the Trump administration in Washington by aggressively promoting the Maga movement’s political and ideological allies across the continent and publicly humiliating the EU on the world stage.

A joint report last month by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation concluded that the US president is actively trying to interfere in European elections and rally Europe’s right-wing populists, including Marine Le Pen in France.

Another populist with Trump support is Andrej Babis, the billionaire leader of the Czech ANO party which at the weekend won a parliamentary majority but — like Macron — will have difficulty in forming a stable government.

Mainstream parties have ruled out any coalition with ANO, leaving Babis to seek backing from two fringe, and potentially fractious, parties. That will make it difficult for him to become a permanent member of Europe’s so-called awkward squad led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovenia’s Robert Fico.

But that is not, according to the conclusion of the joint report, going to stop the onward march of Trump’s European allies to force EU leaders to engage too much time and energy reacting to crises scripted by him.

Tariff threats, rows over security spending and free speech, as well as migration scares are all part of the Trump playbook. He is now using these issues to force the political pace across Europe.

Although individual countries — such as France, Czechia, the Netherlands, Poland, and others — have been targeted, the report did conclude that there are still enough pro-European governments among the 27 EU states for the bloc to stand up and “defend a Europe that writes its own script”.

Let’s hope so.

Budget day

Today is budget day and, up until the last minute, there have been frantic negotiations and lobbying to secure measures such as a €500 cut in third-level student fees and the reduction to 9% of the Vat rate on restaurants.

Once-off cost-of-living measures will not be repeated as the Government tries to rein in spending. High-stakes talks have continued and, reportedly, discussions on the scale of welfare increases have gone down to the wire.

A lot remained unresolved ahead of Paschal Donohoe’s budget speech today — such as the housing allocation — and negotiations on core welfare rates were ongoing up to Sunday.

There will be many contentious issues — the phasing out of the means test for carers’ allowance being one — but there will certainly be no giveaways. But the Government needs to get the balance right.

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