After all the fevered debate about super-juniors and rotating Gormleys during the month-long 'preshuffle', yesterday was one of the most pointless afternoons in the Dáil for some time, writes MIRIAM LORD
ANOTHER LEAD balloon from Brian Cowen. Any more excitement like this and we might wake up. This wasn’t a proper ministerial reshuffle. It was a nervous nudging of chairs around the Cabinet table, a manoeuvre forced upon our plodding Taoiseach when two places became unavoidably vacant.
To be fair to Biffo, he never gave any cause for people to think he was going to radically redesign his front bench. He never says very much at the best of times.
He wasn’t the one fanning the flames of speculation in the month-long preshuffle before yesterday’s non-event in the Dáil.
But then again, he didn’t move to put douse them. He never moves very much at the best of times.
Naturally, people fell to second-guessing what the Taoiseach might do to shake up his tired ministerial line-up. With his Government beginning the final run into the next election, what better time to present a fresh new team to a jaded public? Some innocents imagined he would throw caution to the wind and carry out a major cull of his comfortably institutionalised Ministers. Past performance – consistently uninspiring – indicated otherwise, and so it came it came to pass.
He did the bare minimum, with all the imagination and flair of a goldfish.
At this stage in his tenure, Brian Cowen would have difficulty crossing the road without commissioning a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers to tell him when it was appropriate to proceed, going forward.
And so, even with the Green Party adding a little spice to the mix, Reshuffle Tuesday turned out to be one of the most pointless afternoons in Leinster House for a some time. After all the fevered debate about super-juniors and rotating Gormleys and long-knives and fresh blood, the Taoiseach declared “I am reinvigorating my ministerial team with experienced and capable colleagues” – and then kept the same old faces.
Brian Cowen is to caution what Flann O’Brien’s policeman was to his bicycle. They cannot be parted.
The upshot? Three middle-aged men in navy suits replacing three middle-aged men in navy suits and an extra half car for the Greens. Nobody axed and just three hopefuls plucked from the back benches and given a start in the junior ranks.
Biffo’s night of the rubber knives won’t go down in Dáil history and nor will his soft hand in the velvet glove reshuffle. The FF backbenchers are not happy.
Neither was former minister for social affairs Mary Hanafin, who held on to her ministerial job but was handed the “trapdoor” post of Tourism, Culture and Sport.
The department was “reconfigured” from its previous incarnation of “Arts, Sport and Tourism”.
Radical.
Afterwards, Minister Hanafin, a trooper if ever there was, put a brave face on was seen by most as a demotion. She pondered her change of circumstances in the foyer of Leinster House with her parents, Mona and former senator Des.
“Sure didn’t I grow up in a hotel before my father drank us out of it?” said Mary. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?” And Des, many decades off the drink now, smiled. “That’s right.”
Horses and Greyhounds have been moved out of her department and the animals have been hived off to Brendan Smith in Agriculture. Mary still holds on to the hoofers in Riverdance.
Mary Coughlan was landed into Education, an announcement which heralded anguished wails from teachers the length and breadth of the country.
The Easter education conferences should be far more entertaining this year with “Sweary Mary” on the trail.
Minister Coughlan’s portfolio has been changed to “Education and Skills” from “Education and Science.”
Such imagination.
Meanwhile, Batt O’Keeffe, Biffo’s pal, has moved from Education to a new department which used to be Enterprise, Trade and Employment but is now Enterprise, Trade and Innovation.
Such Vision.
Then there’s Éamon Ó Cuív, who is now the Minister for Condoms, heading up the Department of Social Protection. This also has to do with Social Welfare. Does this mean that State payments are now to be known as Protection money?
The Taoiseach announced his new/old team in the course of a dreadful, jargon-littered speech. He said he was restructuring departments for three reasons. They will “underline the priority issues for this Government in a way that mobilises a broad response”. What does that mean?
They will “ensure greater coherence and produce more efficient delivery” – was he talking about himself?
They will “group functions whose combination is more appropriate to current priorities that the present arrangements”. Time for a double brandy.
The Greens were delighted with themselves though.
“I note that two of my junior ministers have gone on to higher things,” trilled John Gormley, sounding like he a man who’s lost the run of himself entirely. He then took Leo Varadkar to task for being ungracious to former junior minister Trevor Sargent when he had to step down.
“And we’ll do it to Deputy Kenny, don’t worry!” shouted Paul Gogarty, the only Green who doesn’t have, or hasn’t held, a big job.
“Creating jobs will bring us out of recession” said his boss, Gormley, who can’t be faulted in creating jobs for the members of his party.
Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore were deeply unimpressed with Biffo’s handiwork. Inda accused him of “playing a weird version of happy families”. Eamon said the reshuffle was nothing more than public relations stuff and “an exercise in spin”. He should have said a waste of time as well.