Paul Hosford: Winter is coming. But the coalition parties should bring the temperature down too
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The weather has officially turned.
Whereas the first week or so of the general election campaign was played out in unseasonably mild weather, Monday felt like... well, a Monday in November. Damp, dreary, bitterly cold, it will have made one former taoiseach feel somewhat vindicated.
Throughout the year, whenever he was asked for his tuppenceworth, Bertie Ahern talked about how if it were him, he’d call the election for June or July.
That realistically wasn’t an option for Simon Harris, having just assumed the Taoiseach’s office in April, but there will be canvassers up and down the country this week who will wish it had been, given Met Éireann’s predictions for this week.
The weather isn’t the only thing that’s turned icy.
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Shadowboxing has begun to turn personal
While nobody thinks the current state of relations between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will preclude the formation of a government, what had been shadowboxing on points of policy — things that get ironed out in formation talks — have begun to turn personal. Very personal.
Much of the focus has been two Fine Gael politicians — John McGahon and Helen McEntee.
Mr McGahon, the party’s candidate in Louth and a sitting senator, was acquitted in 2022 of assaulting Breen White outside a Dundalk nightclub in 2018, but was later found to be 65% civilly liable by a High Court jury.
Over the weekend, photos of Mr White’s injuries were published and video of the incident circulated, leading to calls for Mr Harris to answer questions on Mr McGahon’s candidacy.
Mr Harris said in Kilkenny that what Mr McGahon did was “clearly wrong, there’s no doubt in relation to that at all” but that he had been acquitted.
But if he thought Micheál Martin would defer to his coalition partner, Mr Harris would have been mistaken.
Speaking in Ranelagh, Mr Martin said that he wouldn’t have allowed Mr McGahon run for his party. Mr Martin stopped short of criticising Taoiseach Simon Harris’s judgement around Mr McGahon, but said he was “surprised” at how Mr Harris had “doubled-down” on his support for the senator.
The comments have gone down poorly in Fine Gael, with sources unhappy that Mr Martin has been “so gleeful” about the chance to wade into the issue.
Meanwhile, in Fianna Fáil there is anger at the Fine Gael reaction to comments made by its TDs and senators around Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
Ms McEntee on Friday suggested that Fianna Fáil TD Jim O’Callaghan’s assertion that she had stolen his homework and implemented his policies was rooted in sexism.
The spats are not likely to damage relations beyond repair, but they may expose the faultlines of future problems.
It might be an idea to be like the weather and take the temperature down.
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