MR DUKES CLIMBS DOWN

The return of Mr Alan Dukes to the Cabinet table as Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications after the resignation of…

The return of Mr Alan Dukes to the Cabinet table as Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications after the resignation of Mr Michael Lowry was widely welcomed. Mr Dukes has always seemed a cut above many of his contemporaries in politics. He has - in many respects - been the natural successor to the late Mr John Kelly, sharing not only his gift for wry, detached commentary but also his political instinct that the national interest must always take precedence over the party interest.

Indeed, Mr Dukes's support for the so called Tallaght strategy during the MacSharry era helped in no small part to lay the foundations for our current robust economic health. Mr Dukes has also railed in his own cutting way about those lesser mortals who might be tempted by the political stroke or the grand gesture. He has liked to position himself and the Fine Gael party firmly on the high moral ground, where politics is driven by idealism and national interest.

Few of these high ideals have been on show over the past 48 hours as Mr Dukes has sought to defend the new regulations on TV deflectors. The Minister has sought to make a virtue of necessity. He has tried to convince the public that the Government's initiative is part of a longstanding effort to regularise matters and to promote fair competition. But it is abundantly clear that the new regulations are, in reality, part of the pre election scramble to mollify any and every lobby group. They are motivated primarily by the need to protect the Government's political skin in constituencies where the deflector groups planned to field candidates.

The irony is that the Government's hastily assembled compromise has left both sides of the deflector row unhappy. The deflector groups who have been promised the prospect of a licence provided they comply with taxation, copyright and planning laws are concerned about the additional costs of the service. There is still some loose talk about fighting the election.

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The concerns of the MMDS operators are much more substantial. The Government is open to the charge that it has reneged on legally binding contracts with the MMDS operators (agreed by the Fianna Fail minister, Mr Ray Burke, in 1989) which appeared to give access to a large and lucrative slice of the rural TV market; indeed, it was on this basis that these companies invested heavily in new technology. In these circumstances, it seems inevitable that the MMDS operators will launch a legal challenge to the new Government regulations. Mr Dukes will bear a very heavy responsibility if the MMDS operators successfully challenge the State and if a multi million pound compensation bill is handed to the taxpayer. As it is, there is an onus on him to explain in very precise terms the legal advice on which the new regulations are based.

But Mr Dukes is open to a more general political charge: he has engaged in the kind of "stroke" politics that he always railed against; he has rewarded illegality and undermined the commercial prospects of those who have complied with the law. Most of all, he and his Government colleagues have demonstrated a lamentable lack of political steel and courage.