For decades Shane Ross was a thorn in the Government’s side. Ross, himself, has not changed as a person or a politician.
His position, however, has. He has escalated from a headache on the opposition benches to a migraine at the Cabinet table.
However, Ross cannot be blamed for the position the Government now finds itself in. He has made his desire for judicial reform clear from the get-go.
Fine Gael accepted his policy, desperate to remain in power and to create a Government. It was never clear whether the party actually believed what their Programme for Governmentcommitted them to.
The past number of days have raised very valid concerns that Fine Gael may not be in favour of the proposed judicial appointments reforms, that it does not see the need for radical changes and that maybe it has found itself in a situation it cannot get out of.
The Bill will proceed and, most likely, will pass before the summer recess. (Though Leo Varadkar is making no timing guarantees). But the implications of this policy will remain.
Fine Gael, the law and order party, is advancing a policy that has the support of its staunch enemies on the left; Sinn Féin, People Before Profit and Solidarity.
It is progressing an initiative that does not have the backing of Fianna Fáil, Labour, the Green Party or indeed the judiciary.
Try selling that to your members while knocking on doors or standing at church gates gathering collections.
The Government also appears to have neglected to consider the other house of the Oireachtas - the Seanad - which could still prove to be a banana skin.
Fine Gael, together with its temporary allies in Sinn Féin, can only count on 26 votes of support in the upper house. Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Green Party will provide 20 votes against it; Michael McDowell and a few like-minded Senators will also vote against it.
Its passage will therefore depend on the support of other Independents whose vote cannot yet be relied upon.
The Government says it will do what it can to make sure the Bill is enacted before the summer recess, but won’t guillotine it either and will make sure all sides get their way.
The Seanad could yet become delay the passage of the Bill by 90 days, meaning it could not take effect until October.
That would mean there would be no agreed mechanism for filling judicial vacancies by the time Mrs Justice Susan Denham retires as Chief Justice in August - leaving the Supreme Court with three vacancies, while another of its members is busy on tribunal duty.
This is an extraordinary predicament the Government has found itself in, but one entirely of their own making.
Unfazed
We hear you folks, the good people of Ireland are unfazed by the judicial reforms. They are probably bogged down reading the constituency report.
Perhaps not.
We are nearing the end of this Dáil recess and it may not be time for a period of reflection.
But we cannot help but wonder what the heck the House managed to achieve other than elect a new Taoiseach?
Maybe the past 12 months have all been a blur and I have missed the extraordinary achievements of our parliamentarians.
All I can seem to recall is dozens of private members motions (which go nowhere), molehills that become mountains and plenty of off-street scrapping between various Government figures.
Yet we still have failed to grasp the housing crisis, the health service remains unreformed, rural crime remains a difficulty, the new politics we dreamed of is dead and life is continuing as normal.
The ongoing speculation over the Fine Gael leadership, no doubt, stalled proceedings but there is little to commend at the end of this Dáil term.
