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And this week's column - https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/pat-leahy-future-of-this-administration-is-now-in-question-1.4335924
The controversy over the Oireachtas golf dinner and the subsequent resignation of Dara Calleary was a spectacular end to the worst week the Government has endured since its formation, and the future of the administration is now seriously in question.
The ability of the Government to function effectively into the future now depends on how it manages the return to school, the resurgence in Covid-19 infections and the Leaving Cert results.
If it screws those things up in the next three weeks the administration may – its strong Dáil majority notwithstanding – simply fall apart.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – along with the Greens – specifically told voters that they were entering into government because the country needed strong leadership from political moderates at a period of acute crisis.
Yet the two big parties have not established the relationship of trust that enables a common purpose, a set of shared objectives, a sense that they are in it together.
In several conversations this week, even before the latest calamity, senior figures in both parties admitted as much. And without that the Coalition cannot function.
They are by turns suspicious and privately contemptuous of each other.
They are by turns suspicious and privately contemptuous of each other.
The FF lads think that the FG lads are only half-committed at best (they nurture especial doubts about the Tánaiste) and the Fine Gaelers watch aghast at one FF disaster after another. FF wonders if the other side wants it to work; FG wonders if the other side can make it work.
The two parties might this weekend consider the alternative. If Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael go back to the electorate because they couldn’t get on with one another they will deserve the thrashing they will get before they watch Sinn Féin lead the next government.
“Who will get the blame if it falls apart?” a former minister wondered last week. My answer: if it falls apart there will be enough blame to go around for everyone.
Says one senior civil servant: “If they want the country to pull together, they need to start doing it themselves.”
Says one senior civil servant: “If they want the country to pull together, they need to start doing it themselves.”
