Martin's hopes of redeeming a very bad start rest with reopening schools on time

John Downing

In a fix: Taoiseach Micheál Martin needs to get full marks for his plan on reopening schools

July 27 2020 02:30 AM

There are various explanations for the origins of the phrase: "With one bound our hero was free." My favourite begins with the unlikely tale of a writer going on a drinking binge, getting into a heap of trouble at work, and then redeeming the case. The last element may be the only really unlikely bit.

The writer's job was to produce pot-boiler thrillers for a weekly magazine in which a dashing hero got himself into all kinds of impossibly tight corners. During the days of the writer's absence, and very late arrival back at work in rag order, the magazine editors fretted about how the hero could be extricated from the latest extreme pickle with any kind of credibility.

But our bibulous writer was no wimp. He simply sat and wrote: "With one bound our hero was free."

Now let us borrow some of that epic writer's effrontery and simply write: "With one bound Micheál Martin was free."

Filling in the backstory to get to that epic point in our political tale of derring-do is pretty easy. The Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader wrote some of that "story so far" all by himself. Other allies and would-be friends then added lavish coats of paint to the floor around the corner in which "our hero" now finds himself stuck.

Today is precisely one calendar month since Micheál Martin achieved a 31-year ambition and defied political gravity to become Taoiseach. He had no sooner unveiled his political team than all hell broke loose.

There were several noses seriously out of joint. The western half of the country was up in arms for being snubbed. There were towns from which our hero was warned off. Our hero was looking pretty scuffed. Days went by and just when it looked like political calm was emerging at last, details of Barry Cowen's past drink-driving offence emerged. That one dragged on much too long, and eventually ended where it should have ended a lot sooner, with the departure of the agriculture minister after just 17 days in office.

Amid all of this, our hero Micheál Martin's new Government confederates were doing him few favours either. The Green Party was running a very good-mannered leadership heave, which for all its "please" and "thank you", and tributes to rivals, was still a pretty gut struggle.

The Green Party leadership contest ended last Thursday night with a wafer-thin win for leader Eamon Ryan. The final days of the contest also saw the emergence of an internal pressure group with all the potential to damage ongoing Green Party unity. That again is inimical to our hero's welfare.

And that is by no means all. While Micheál Martin spent five days, Friday to Tuesday, closeted in Brussels fighting the good fight for Ireland at the EU coalface, his predecessor and new side-kick, Leo Varadkar, was gadding about the media.

The new Tánaiste, Varadkar, seemed to be taking his role of being "Taoiseach while the Taoiseach is out" a little too literally.

He publicly questioned the mixed messages, of advising against all bar necessary foreign travel, while also publishing a "green list" of safer countries to which one might travel.

It harked back to the bould Leo's early days in cabinet when colleagues lamented his fondness for the "truth serum". It all has its fun side - but it also has the ability to bring down a government over a short time. It has to stop.

You can add a few other side-bar rows to make "our hero's" position even more impossible. Choose for example those €16,000-plus per year top-ups for super junior ministers, and the failure to deliver enough votes to get the Government candidate elected deputy Dáil chairperson.

At all events, dear reader, you will now agree that "our hero" is in a bad fix. But this writer also realises that the passage of time - and the different conventions between potboiler and political writing - means we won't get away with just saying: "With one bound Micheál Martin is free."

You'll need a little more detail, which is this: Micheál Martin's hopes of redeeming himself after a very bad start now rest with delivering the reopening of schools in just four weeks' time.

Can the former teacher and education minister do it? When you put it all like that, you quickly see that there is not always a wild amount of distance between potboiler fiction and political writing.

But the clear reality is that Micheál Martin has already staked his own personal credibility and that of his entire Government on getting this one right. He has also, probably rightly, put foreign holidays and reopening of pubs very much behind his schools' objective.

He is not the first Taoiseach to take a direct hands-on approach with an embattled government department's affairs. But it is rare that the government leader becomes so publicly embroiled.

The reality is that pupils, parents, teachers, and support staff have remained very much in the dark about the general assurances from the Education Department on just how schools would reopen. This lack of information has fed people's general anxiety. After three months of no schooling - most of us will agree that a remedy has to be swiftly found before another school year begins.

Today, Micheál Martin and his new and untried Education Minister Norma Foley are due to step into the gap of danger with a plan. This needs to be bold and garnished with enormous funding for huge new demands: for hiring more substitute teachers for sickness cases, deep ongoing cleaning of schools, more administrative support staff, better toilets and better classrooms.

Micheál Martin knows his future is riding on this. But so is the future of the entire nation.