We watched with fascinated horror as Minister James Reilly began the last phase of his career as Health Minister. Denial and anger both came in quick succession, depression and acceptance are soon to come. This is not a good time for the biggest of Enda's cabinet of rubber lions.
Swords and Balbriggan are two places in Reilly's constituency, and close to his political heart. They were shoehorned onto a list of places which are to get primary care centres. Admittedly, Swords is a rapidly expanding urban area, whose population exploded during the 'good times', thanks to what we now know to have been largely short-sighted property wheezes, when Ray Burke was the tallest hog in that particular trough. Like all such farm yard animals, he was up to his curly tail in property swill, and despite Bertie's tree climbing escapades, it turned out that this little piggy had to go wee-wee-wee all the way to Dublin Castle.
Interesting about Swords is that one of the first things to be built amid the miles and miles of suburban beigeness was not a school or a hospital, but a shopping centre. Public transport wasn't updated, and so many commute from within the pale as if they were country students hanging out on George's Quay on a Friday, hoping to bus it home to mammy in Galway or Castlecomer or god-knows-where with a smile and a bag full of skundies; which is exactly what the people of Swords are forced to do to get home from Dublin city centre. Whilst a big new road was built, many, many houses were too, filling the new road with chronic traffic jams, they forgot or ignored issues around basic infrastructure.
When the list of new primary care centres came out, was Reilly cyphening scant resources into his own backyard? Certainly not! This episode was too cackhanded to be a classic constituency stroke. This was a heady mix of ministerial hubris and gross incompetence. I think I know why. Hear me out:
Dublin politicians, whilst good at coming across as dodgy and well versed in blatant parish pump-ery, lack the finesse of their rural counterparts when it comes to being bona fide shucksters. Noone pulls a stroke for votes like a country politician: a swimming pool and leisure centre? *ding* - you are re-elected! Things not looking good for your voter base among rural parishes - how's about a new clubhouse for the local GAA -*ding* - proceeed to Leinster House! Dublin politicians just haven't the savvy, the street smarts to pull a fast one like that and still be loved. With the exception of He Who Shall Remain Nameless in Drumcondra, urban, particularly Dublin TD's haven't the ability for the sort of clientelism to book your return ticket to Kildare Street every five years.
Alan Shatter bored himself out of office in 2002 with Abbeylara. No-one cared about it on the mean streets of Rathfarnham. What he lacks in backyard-intuition, he makes up for in pomposity, the Kate Middleton row being exhibit A.
Eamon Ryan is a policy expert of the first order, but has the integrity of George Washington. Gone from Dublin South without so much as an Eamon Ryan Eco-Leisure Centre in the middle of Marley Park.
It takes a particlar brand of TD to moot a casino in the shape of the White House as sound economic investment and be carted out on a thousand shoulders on election night. And Reilly did nothing of the sort.
My theory, and it's just that, is mundane in comparison, but no less lethal. Having seen the original list of twenty locations made up by Roisin Shortall, Reilly and his Sir Humphrys added a few more places to put their stamp on it. Swords - and North County Dublin in general - is in dire need of basic infrastructure, as this region is: a) closer to Dundalk than Dublin and b) bursting at the seems in a timeframe that would make Tallaght's transition from country village to urban reality TV backdrop seem like a gradual inevitability. Reilly's choice of Swords, whatever about Balbriggan, was sound. Had this been naked vote grabbing, he'd brazen this out; it wasn't. He probably won’t.
Reilly’s no shuckster, but he’s other things: blind to not running roughshod over a hard working and intellectually razor sharp Minister of State, definitely. And what's more, Shortall's a woman. To go over the little woman's head must have been irresistible in the plain-as-day-FG culture of Alpha male-ism. But Shortall's tough and not for being treated like that, whatever about the absence of tangible support from her leader this evening.
In short, a man in opposition who talks the big talk needs to have the ability to back it up when he’s on the other side of the chamber. From Stubbs Gazette, to not challenging consultants, to Roscommon Hospital, to this debacle: this may be as good as it gets.
