The troops are getting restless

Trouble in paradise? The unemployment situation is beginning to bite in Fine Gael, with jobless parliamentarians spoiling for a fight in the absence of anything better to do.

In the coming weeks activation measures – the fashionable jargon for jobs – should placate some of the restless backbenchers when the committee chairmanships are allocated. But there are precious few baubles to go around.

Rumbles of discontent are already beginning in the parliamentary party, with some TDs complaining that ministers are not accessible and that lines of communication haven’t been opened.

This is a familiar gripe, one that was noisily aired by Fianna Fáil backbenchers in the final years of the party’s reign. So the Fine Gaelers are starting early, although perhaps backbenchers are merely firing a warning shot across ministerial bows to underline that they will not be ignored.

“The parliamentary party is very powerful, because we have strength in numbers,” says one. “If Ministers retreat to their ivory towers we’ll be a time bomb waiting to explode.”

Younger deputies say they find it easier to get responses from Ministers if they table a parliamentary question, because otherwise it is too difficult to make direct contact with them.

Just two Ministers made it to Wednesday night’s party meeting. Simon Coveney and Alan Shatter took note of their colleagues’ discontent and went some way towards soothing ruffled feathers. (By the way, Coveney, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, took part in a photocall on Wednesday for next month’s All-Ireland Sheep-Shearing Championships. He made an attempt to fleece a docile Texel-Cheviot dry hogget, terrifying passing taxpayers on Kildare Street. We asked the farmer the animal’s name. “Baaahbera,” came the reply.)

The backbenchers’ complaints at the meeting were about Ministers, not the leadership. Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, the new deputy for Laois Offaly, complained bitterly that a Minister had visited the constituency and she hadn’t been told a thing about it.

Charlie Flanagan, her constituency colleague, brought the house down when he piped up: “That’s the first I heard about it.”

There were moves to establish a backbench group to look after the interests of the parliamentary-party members, but this was headed off at the pass by the chief whip, Paul Kehoe.

At least he won’t have to deal with any eruptions from Lucinda Creighton (left). The Minister for State for European Affairs looked happy in her new role this week, hobnobbing with her French counterpart in Paris.

“That’s one volcano that’s been extinguished for the moment,” said a veteran backbencher.