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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
22 July 2022
Varad
Kar ries on
By Conor Lenihan
Leo Varadkar will
resume as Taoiseach
in December, on the
back of the weakness
of Micheál Martin,
whom he has cleverly
outmanoeuvred but his
record, mandate and
popularity are not good
W
HEN THE post-election wake occurred
in 2020 Leo Varadkar sounded an
appropriately mournful tone stating
his party was destined for the
opposition benches.
However, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, weak as they
were. had at least one thing in common - a shared
loathing for an insurgent Sinn Féin. Micheál Martin
doubled down on the anti- rhetoric leaving himself
with no other option but to join Fine Gael in coalition.
Varadkar took full advantage of the situation by
embracing Fianna Fáil and, knowing Martin had
nowhere else to go, snapped up all the best
ministries for him and his party colleagues —
Finance, Trade, Foreign Aairs and Justice. We
embraced a rotating Taoiseachship something both
big parties had long disdained.
Fine Gael, having lost the election, was back in
power in a big way - with Fianna Fáil and the Greens.
With his personal confidence soaring, Varadkar
proceeded to run rings around Martin in government.
The long delay in forming the government had
allowed Varadkar to pose as the strong leader
fighting the early war on the Covid 19 Pandemic. The
fact that all the decisions were actually being made
by a tiny coterie of ocials and health professional
didn’t matter - it was Varadkar who was getting the
headlines.
Having snaed all the key ministries Varadkar
allowed Martin have the first turn as rotating
Taoiseach - knowing as he did that Martin was his
lifeboat and without him there would be no coalition.
Martin needed Varadkar more than Varadkar
needed Martin. The Varadkar publicity machine
leaked and gave out the good news from government
in defiance of the previous convention that the
Taoiseach got first bite of the cherry.
Fianna Fáil cabinet ministers became the first
victims of the new coalition as Fine Gael continued
to appoint their own to plum positions in the
domestic and European gravy train - Zappone,
Woulfe, and Commissioner Mairead McGuinness.
Fianna Fáil are in oce but Fine Gael are in power.
Yet this December coming, all other things being
equal, Leo Varadkar will return to his position as
Taoiseach with Micheál Martin bowing out. Varadkar
NEWS
Vrdkr nd O Tuthil, under Collins
July 2022 23
will of course return to the familiar Fine Gael theme
that only they can eectively fight a rising threat of
being in government after the next election.
Given the cynicism that already exists about
insider dealing in Irish political life, the DPP’s
decision not to prosecute Varadkar for his
impropriety in leaking a confidential draft heads of
agreement between the state and a medical union
to a rival representative body, seems to have
generated a very serious adverse public reaction
against the government on the back of a perception
that it is part of a segment of society to which the
rules, or rather the laws, do not apply.
One thing is certain: a lengthy and exhaustive
Garda investigation took place and the detectives
involved identified clear grounds for prosecution in
a report of several hundred pages.
The Garda investigation involved the retrieval of
a whole stack of indiscreet telephone calls, texts,
emails and WhatsApp messages between Varadkar,
Varadkar’s time is again coming
but it could all be a provocation
to an angry body politic, until
June 2025
his friend Dr Maitiú Ó Tuathail and others.
The mere fact that the Garda considered it
necessary to pass the case to the DPP shows that a
certain evidentiary threshold had been passed.
The real surprise is the eschewing of this reality
in political and media circles.
If a prosecution file involving alleged corruption
had been passed to the DPP on anyone else in a
public position it is unlikely they would survive calls
to either resign or step aside while the matter was
resolved.
There was never any pressure from his coalition
partners, Fianna Fáil whose leader is in weak
position and the Greens who have lost the ethical
mojo that propelled them in a previous era
However, Varadkar will not face prosecution and
the path is clear. Let’s hope he travels wisely.
So far the actual political legacy of Leo Varadkar
is threadbare. The fact that he is gay and from a
mixed race background yet advanced in a once-
bigoted system was trumpeted early on and tended
to render opaque his reputation as Fine Gael’s most
right-wing and anti-environmental Dáil Deputy.
His conservative following has long been
disillusioned due to his morphing into a conventional
liberal when given executive oce. It’s as if he had
apolitical philosophy but has had to jettison it in the
interests of electoral advancement.
For the rest of us, indications that he would be a
‘dient type of politician” a champion for the truth
over Maurice McCabe for example, have dissipate in
the litany of controversial public appointments that
seems notably to have dogged his period as leader
of Fine Gael. The responsibility for these has been
happily dumped on others - Simon Coveney being a
spectacular example, Simon Harris a slippery other.
Varadkar has a certain superficial articulacy but
his novelty value has worn o; he has lost popularity,
and his party mandate with only 35 seats out of 160
at the 2020 election is infirm; and yet Varadkar’s
time is again coming. It could all be a provocation to
an angry body politic, until June 2025.
Conor Lenihan is a former Fianna Fáil Minister and
author of biographies of Charles Haughey and Albert
Reynolds.
sdsdisudoisudoisudoiuou
Vrdkr is now off the hook on
leked drft Terms of Agreement
