IT'S rare and telling when an inveterate political junkie like this writer gets sick and tired of the toughest game there is.
The protracted battle on speaking rights in Dáil Éireann is one such instance.
An Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his colleagues have – either necessarily or unwisely depending on one’s perspective – expended a lot of capital to accommodate the controversial Tipperary TD Michael Lowry and three other independents who, even though they have agreed to vote for the Government for its duration, will be allocated extra speaking slots to the detriment of opposition TDs, according to the latter cohort.
At least to me, it’s far from spellbinding stuff. That said, related chaos has enveloped Leinster House more than once.
In particular, when the Government employed its majority to ram the alterations to the rules through, there were ugly scenes. Roaring and shouting were the order of the day.
The new Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy, who is being subjected to serious scrutiny, lost control of proceedings; to be fair, hers was an impossible task.
There were nasty personal attacks and a physical altercation was narrowly averted.
Meanwhile, storm clouds loom large at home and abroad.
The housing crisis is only deepening. The Irish economy is facing into the massive threat of Trump’s tariffs.
But months after the November 29 general election, no Oireachtas committees have been formed and politicians are fighting tooth and nail about speaking rights.
“A plague on all their houses” is an understandably prevalent sentiment in the country.
Leaving aside high minded platitudes and lofty democratic ideals, the constitutional role of the Dáil and the sacred trust that has been bestowed upon the members thereof by the people, I keep returning to a basic query that I am pretty confident I know the answer to. Is there any evidence of any kind establishing that a TD profits electorally or otherwise from addressing the chamber on a frequent basis?
With apologies for being a cynic, I’d have many bigger fish to fry than speaking rights if I were in the shoes of the women and men of the 34th Dáil.
Transatlantic tensions: Trump aides mock Europe
The gross incompetence and lack of experience in the upper echelon of President Donald Trump’s administration are manifest in the deliberations over military strikes against Houthi rebels among his top officials on the Signal app, which many of us have on our mobile phones, and to which a leading journalist was inadvertently invited.
Why on earth were they not using a more protected line of communication to hold a hugely sensitive discussion as to the merits of an operation in which American lives could have been imperilled?
Further, how in hell was Jeff Greenberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, asked to join the group? It is, frankly, astonishing.
At any other juncture in the history of the United States, it is a near certainty that the culpable individual(s) – in this case, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and potentially Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth – would have either resigned or been terminated.
In characteristic fashion, however, the president and those involved have turned their fire on Greenberg and absurdly have sought to deny what the whole world can read in his 3,500 word piece detailing precisely what transpired. Predictions are a fool’s errand when it comes to Trump.
Nonetheless, I am sceptical that the man who garnered fame for firing people on The Apprentice will force any heads to roll.
Internationally, the story here is the disparaging tenor of the comments with respect to Europe.
“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” said Vice President JD Vance. Hegseth replied: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
That these key figures’ shared vantage point is so anti-European is disturbing.
Vance, Hegseth, et al are convinced that a significant swathe of the American public, including the vast majority of the MAGA movement, concur with their view that “socialist” Europe is past it and should no longer benefit from US largesse.
Their approximation of domestic opinion is reflected in findings in a comprehensive survey conducted by the Austrian Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Institute.
It reveals that 15% believe that the US should no longer provide security for Europe, period. The most numerous segment of those polled, 48%, are fine with the continued allocation of resources, but only under the strict conditions that Europe pay its “fair share,” that Europe contribute to US defence expenditure and/or that Europe enhance its own military capacity.
When coupled with data suggesting that European citizens want to be “independent” of the US, this doesn’t bode well for the future of the transatlantic alliance.
In this milieu, one might expect that the Democratic Party would be strengthening.
Surely, Trump’s climbing negative must bolster his foes’ standing. Yet this is emphatically not happening.
The title of a piece on CNN indicating that they are registering at merely 29% says it all: “Democratic Party’s favourability drops to a record low.”
An item on Axios illustrates their plight: “no popular leader to help improve it”; “insufficient numbers to stop legislation in Congress”; “young voters are growing dramatically more conservative”; “a bad senate map for Senate races”; “thanks to the number of people fleeing blue states, the math for a Democrat to win the presidency will just get harder in 2030…Democrats could win all the states Kamala Harris carried in 2024 – plus Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – and still lose the White House”; “we used to have liberal, moderate and conservative Democrats. Now we’re basically a liberal party.”
In short, Democrats are struggling to sort a mess of their own making, one that plenty of us have foreseen and warned of for some time.
Embracing corporatism and deprioritising the interests of blue collar workers while simultaneously adopting the cultural values of the coasts and making Middle America feel unwelcome – at the behest of moneyed donors – was and is a disastrous strategy, especially given the dynamics of the US electoral system. Consequently, despite everything and with the caveat that the winds can shift quickly, Donald Trump’s GOP has to be fairly pleased at the moment.
A delayed delight
My pals and I got screwed in 2020.
We were ecstatic to be flying to the US for the Connacht Football Championship opener between Galway and New York. Covid-19 put paid to our plans.
Well, we will be in Gaelic Park in the Bronx on the 6th of April. Nothing could stop us.
It will be a fantastic weekend in the Big Apple.
As someone incredibly and equally proud to have been born in Boston and to have strong familial roots in a county that has been so good to me, I have two compelling reasons to root for the maroon and white to inflict a severe beating on the representatives of a city that I will eternally regard (kinda) jokingly as the old enemy. Gaillimh Abú!
Larry Donnelly is a Boston-born and educated attorney, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a regular media contributor on politics, current affairs and law in Ireland and the US. Twitter/X: @LarryPDonnelly
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