We've come a long way in 1,000 days -- mostly down
'I'm told that in your present manifestation the Fianna Fail/Green government is today a thousand days in office," Eamon Gilmore informed the Taoiseach in the Dail yesterday afternoon.
One thousand days, eh?
Assuming that the Labour leader has got his sums right -- and let's face it, the political application of mathematical statistics frequently results in two plus two equalling some handy number other than four -- we've come a long way in those 1,000 days. A long way down, sadly.
June 2007 was the last sip of the summer wine; we still thought that the banks were grand, trustworthy institutions where you could safely keep your few quid; there were queues outside Brown Thomas stores for handbags and estate agents for houses, and no queues at all outside dole offices; newly graduated young folk left the country because they wanted to, rather than because they had to.
And in June 2007, the General Election saw Fianna Fail snatch victory from what looked like certain defeat, and then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern crafted together a rock-solid coalition with Greens, a couple of PDs and four independents giving a comfortable voting majority to his government.
Oh, but 1,000 days is a mighty long eon of time in politics. The money's all gone, our trust in banks is definitely gone, and the only creature more gone than Bertie is his beloved creation, the Celtic Tiger.
And Bertie's other construct -- his meticulously woven coalition -- looks about as steady as a bouncy castle. There have been shocks, alarms, wobbles and in the last bewildering few weeks, the conveyor belt-style departures of two senior ministers and a junior minister.
This has left the nerves of both ministers and backbenchers jangling loudly around the Dail.
For jittery government deputies, every loud noise sounds like yet another executed head hitting the carpet.
And all this talk of reshuffles is only serving to increase tensions. Yesterday afternoon, these frayed nerves were on full display during a particularly tetchy exchange between the Tanaiste and Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar.
Young Leo, the party's spokesman on Enterprise, Trade & Employment, has been rediscovering his attack-pup status of late and yesterday he pounced on Mary Coughlan.
"Has the Taoiseach had any consultations with you about breaking up the department, because I'm sure he would actually discuss it with you before he would consider removing one of the elements of your department or breaking it up," he reckoned.
And then he got unnecessarily personal. He referred to a member of the audience in the previous night's 'Frontline' show on RTE who had said that there was "a cringe factor" when the Tanaiste was abroad on trade missions.
Leo also referred to a newspaper article which had claimed "the IDA are embarrassed by you when you go overseas with them.
"Others have said that you're unable to talk to business people and that when you do the language you use is often inappropriate and vulgar," he charged. The Tanaiste was clearly rattled and must've been sorely tempted to be hung for a sheep as a lamb by launching a Paul Gogarty-style, potty-mouthed tirade at her tormentor. But she didn't rise to the bait.
Instead, she stuck to the official reshuffle line. She wouldn't "add to any rumours within the context of the final decision of the Taoiseach," she declared. She was less composed when it came to Leo's second barb. "On the other issues which you have alluded to -- many nasty comments -- I appreciate very much that many of those are politically motivated," she retorted.
"My personality is a matter for others to decide. My job is to represent this country abroad when I do so, and I do so with pride and with the privilege that has been bestowed on me by my Taoiseach," she said.
But Leo's jeering had got to her. It's one thing surviving a grim 1,000 days in the frontline of this embattled government. But it's another thing entirely knowing that sometime soon during the next 1,000 days you could find yourself reshuffling cannon-fodder.
Sometime soon, some will be having the longest of days.
- LISE HAND
Irish Independent
