Micheál’s baptism of farce can’t go on forever. Things will have to settle down for the new Taoiseach, if only to puncture the expanding clouds of smug puffing up around gleefully silent Fine Gael TDs.
He was forced to take another trip up to the Phoenix Park on Tuesday. That wasn’t in the plan.
Is it yourself again, Taoiseach?
It is, Micheál D.
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And who are you bringing with you this time?
Dara Calleary, again. I want to have him made up to a full minister now. And I have young Dr Jack and Seán Fleming here too . . .
The President wouldn’t have been expecting to see Micheál Martin back so soon after anointing his freshly-appointed Cabinet for him a few weeks ago. It was so very last minute. But they rallied around in the Áras.
Sabina nipped out to Centra for some biscuits for Jack and a drop of brandy for a shocked looking Seán. They hid the two dogs in case Micheál kicked them on his way in, because he’s been having that sort of a week. And that’s before his new Government announced the pubs won’t be reopening until August 10th.
Things just keep getting better for the new Taoiseach.
Michael D dug out the emergency seals of office he keeps in the back of the press for when unexpected visitors turn up and he duly installed Micheál’s better-late-than never Minister for the Wesht along with a replacement Chief Whip and a surprised looking new junior minister from Laois. Then he hunted the three of them out the door because the Taoiseach and Jack were due in Dublin Castle for a Cabinet meeting and Seán Fleming had to lie down in a darkened room and come to terms with his sudden elevation.
What a day. What a week. What a wretched start to a term of office. Anything that can go wrong for Micheál has gone wrong for him.
His new administration was charitably summed up by Socialist Paul Murphy in the Dáil on Wednesday as “this absolute dumpster fire of 2½ weeks of a government”. Although it’s easy enough to extinguish a blaze in a skip.
A conflagration in your own coalition is a different story.
Yet when Micheál awoke on the morning after the traumatic night he sacked a senior minister, he must have been hoping this cathartic excision would herald a new day, a new beginning, a new Fianna Fáil and a new Taoiseach.
The one he has been trying to get out there since his election but hasn’t been allowed to because of screw-ups in his own ranks.
Then he would have heard the voice of Conor Lenihan on his radio, shouting the odds about Garda vetting and ministerial formation and what he thought should have happened before the Taoiseach was forced to relieve Barry Cowen of his duties. That would be Conor “Crazy Horse” Lenihan, former minister of State in the bad old days of Fianna Fáil who lost his Dáil seat in the great revenge cull of 2011.
His last public pronouncement was in this newspaper after former government colleague Martin was elected Taoiseach at the end of last month: "The extinction of the party is now a distinct possibility and privately a fear of many of its members," he cheerily wrote.
At this point, the Taoiseach would have been well within his rights to go back to bed and, like the minister he just sacked, refuse to speak publicly to anyone.
But he couldn’t do that. Nor was there any facility for him to press the reset button on his leadership and start afresh.
Instead, having terminated the ministerial career of a popular colleague for what some might describe as gross insubordination – the Taoiseach wanted Cowen to make a statement to the Dáil explaining further developments in an embarrassing drink-driving conviction story when he had claimed there was nothing more to say but his minister flatly refused – he had to return to the chamber and face questions on the episode and the way he “mishandled” it.
The Dáil landscape and the atmosphere surrounding it has changed hugely since Martin took over from Leo Varadkar at the head of a new government.
Perhaps Leo was off buying a lottery ticket. It's all going very well for him and his party, sailing serenely above Fianna Fáil's troubles
Varadkar, who is now Tánaiste and starring in his own fluffy publicity outings while his successor is going through the political horrors in the opening weeks of his stewardship, wasn’t in the Dáil to add a supportive presence to Martin as Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Labour’s Alan Kelly went after him like a pair of angry Jack Russells trying to outdo each on the savaging front. The lack of Fine Gael heavy hitter in general was noticeable.
Perhaps Leo was off buying a lottery ticket. It’s all going very well for him and his party, sailing serenely above Fianna Fáil’s troubles.
He is now filling the role of angelic understudy to the battling leading man, treading the good news path until he takes over in a couple of years and making statesmanlike pronouncements from the sidelines in the interim.
It was easier for him when he was taoiseach, in a confidence-and-supply arrangement with Fianna Fáil. The party took much of the sting out of the opposition for him when he took Leaders’ Questions.
There is no comfortable buffer zone for this Taoiseach. We had forgotten how it used to be.
Mary Lou tore strips off Micheál. And when she finished, Kelly ripped off some more.
The claims and counter-claims are well rehearsed in the media now. The Taoiseach had no option but to dismiss Cowen. The Opposition says he only sacked him when the emergence of further information, which they say he knew about all along, looked like doing him political damage.
Martin remained calm throughout the long interrogation, which went on sporadically for a couple of hours.
Kelly then said the Minister for Justice also had questions to answer in light of a Garda Pulse report being procured so quickly by Cowen when he asked for it. And “where the hell” was Helen McEntee? “She’s out tweeting about greenways.”
We saw her downstairs in the canteen. With quite a few other cheerful-looking Fine Gaelers.
Finally, the Taoiseach got around to announcing Cowen’s replacement. Calleary, the man he chose to overlook a couple of weeks ago. There was no applause or sense of occasion in the cavernous Convention Centre auditorium when the Mayo man got his call-up. Dara hardly cracked a smile.
Meanwhile, Mattie McGrath rounded on McDonald for calling him a “sleeveen” the previous day after he opposed a vote on Cowen coming into the Dáil to answer questions.
She didn’t deny it.
“I’ll take no sleeveenish lessons from a party that has such a murky past and are still involved in that past” he fumed, demanding an apology, saying the rest of the Opposition groups are not going to be dictated to by Mary Lou who has “appointed” herself Leader of the Opposition.
“If that’s the new type of politics – my goodness. Is the kneecapping going to be next, or the threats?”
Cowen arrived at lunchtime and rambled nonchalantly around the upper tier of seating where the backbench Fianna Fáilers hang out. Then he went to the canteen and joined Éamon Ó Cuív. He left in the company of John McGuinness. Has Fianna Fáil’s awkward squad got a powerful new recruit?
Finally, more than three hours after he first got to his feet, Micheál was able to escape. His new appointees, about to make that special trip to the park, waited for him in the lobby of the soaring, glass-fronted atrium. There was no clapping guard of honour this time. He arrived at speed, walking down the moving escalator, holding a sandwich in a brown paper bag.
Micheál put on his face mask before he got into the car, still holding the bag.
Good luck with eating the sandwich.
Kind of sums up his lousy start.
