Anne Harris: Dr Eimear O’Connor a scapegoat in a political battle not of her making

The public discourse of the last week, the “Niall Collins’s wife” saga, has been a struggle between a straw man and a publicly misused woman. The straw man – the grossly exaggerated argument posited in order to then oppose that exaggeration – that swept social media was that “mainstream media” avoided the Niall Collins story. Mainstream media is certainly moderated by the need to establish the facts to the best of its ability before publishing. Avoidance? Clearly not. And mainstream media, on discovering a story is inaccurate, corrects, withdraws or apologises.

The misused woman is Dr Eimear O’Connor, who is married to Niall Collins. For weeks now the phrase “Niall Collins’s wife” has been storm-tossed on the barbarous seas of Dáil Éireann. Last Thursday it reached foaming fury in Leaders’ Questions. Starting with Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns, who didn’t seem to appreciate that to identify a woman by her husband is to diminish her, it reached fever pitch with Paul Murphy, who wallowed in the “wife” word at least half a dozen times.

It was a shocking moment, as if we were back in the days before feminism exploded on the world; a time when sexism in society limited women’s opportunities and, as Betty Friedan wrote, “the problems were buried, unspoken ... in the minds of women”.

[ ‘It’s not the talk of the town’: Patrickswell locals bemused by Niall Collins row ]

What did women fight for all these years if not for autonomy, for their own agency and that they not be judged by their relationships with men?

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Alone in the House, Tánaiste Micheál Martin grasped this central point: “We should not cast aspersions on any woman who goes forward and purchases a piece of property.”

The sequence of events has now been forensically documented: the expression of interest by Dr Eimear O’Connor in December 2006, in a site in Patrickswell, to build a medical centre; the meeting one month later of the Bruff area committee (one of five local area committees), attended by Niall Collins, which decided to sell the land, although the statutory power to execute the decision did not rest with it. Then came the decision by the full council over a year after Niall Collins had departed the local government scene to sell the land by transparent, public auction; and the sale at the highest bid (€148,000) to Dr Eimear O’Connor.

Questions for Niall Collins, Holly Cairns's opportunity, PBP stakes its territory

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But much has got lost in the miasma of the debate. Firstly, far from being a throwback to the “brown envelope” era where councillors pressurised officials to do their bidding on planning, the reverse was the case here. The initiative came from the officials – the executive of the local area committee on the recommendation of a senior engineer. And as for Dr O’Connor engaging in subterfuge because her husband was a councillor, she did the opposite: she exercised her own agency. Writing to the council through her solicitor, she openly declared her hand – her interest in the land – which anyone was entitled to do. And according to officials, others did.

Given all this, Paul Murphy’s fulminations about “an indictable offence under section 177 of the local Government Act” seem mystifying. If it is indeed an “indictable offence”, why has nobody called the guards? And if mainstream media are so shy of this story, how come Murphy’s intention to take a complaint to the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) was headlined for days in all media? Complaints to Sipo are part of the parliamentary quotidian and normally receive scant attention in media.

But Murphy, as a parliamentarian, has never shied from weaponising its institutions. When in 2017 he was acquitted of the false imprisonment* of then-tánaiste Joan Burton and her assistant in 2014, who for three hours had been trapped and traumatised by a jeering mob at a water protest – with Murphy having been filmed leaning against the incarcerating car – he used his Dáil platform* to accuse gardaí of “lying under oath” in a co-ordinated way that implied “an agreement to commit perjury”.

Clearly what offends Murphy’s pompous ideals is that Dr O’Connor may sell the property back to the council “at a profit”.

[ Niall Collins controversy has come to a head – but has it run out of steam? ]

In fact, her plans for the site are not known. She has planning permission for social housing, but no construction work has actually taken place. Either way, it is an extraordinary mind game. Call it profit, but as an economic model it’s as old as the millennia, and though this can be enlightened – as in this case, building social houses, if that is what transpires – it is anathema to the far left.

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As Murphy and The Ditch must know, the only purchaser or lessor of any new social housing that may be built would be the council or approved housing body.

Perhaps Sipo should look into the meaning of the practice cherchez la femme in Dáil Éireann.

*This article was amended on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023 to clarify the specific charge on which Paul Murphy was acquitted. A reference to Mr Murphy having “used Dáil privilege” to make allegations against gardaí was amended as Mr Murphy made similar allegations when speaking on the record to reporters outside the Dáil.