Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin has been on Twitter this morning with an attached picture. He shows a photograph of Leo Varadkar and Séamus Woulfe together and smiling, with the tart tweet ‘Some people don’t seem to think the rules apply to them’. Bull’s eye, I think.
Golfgate wasn’t a good idea from start to finish. Whatever amadán dreamed up this Oireachtas golf tournament in the midst of a pandemic I don’t know, but s/he should be locked in the wine cellar of the Cliften House Hotel. The politicians, journalist(s) and judge who attended acted recklessly and foolishly. They could and may have given the Covid-19 virus a significant boost.
But as Ó Broin notes, it’s the idea that one rule should apply to them and another to the rest of us – that’s what’s really galling. That they’d feel entitled to act as they chose, while tut-tutting at the rest of us if we step out of Covid security. The gathering may or may not have resulted in infection and its spread. But the easy contempt with which these people spent their time golfing, gathering and gobbling/quaffing is what really pisses off Sean Citizen. Two politicians have paid a heavy price – Phil Hogan and Dara Calleary have crashed and burned. Now Judge Séamus Woulfe has been told that he should resign from the Supreme Court. If he does, he won’t be able to practice as a barrister. Call me an old softie, but I think that’s excessive punishment. As I think was the punishment allotted to Phil Hogan and, to a lesser extent, Dara Calleary was. Suspension for a fixed period would have been sufficient. And likewise Woulfe.
The same applies to Varadkar. Of course he was moving in the gilded circle world, where he could take a confidential document and slip it to one of his medical chums. As my partner-in-crime Pat McArt pointed out in yesterday Zoom podcast, if a senior civil servant had done what Leo did, he’d have been bounced off the pavement quicktime. Varadkar faces a vote of No Confidence in the Dáil today. It won’t be passed – Micheál Martin would rather have his fingers chopped off one by one, rather than release his grip on the job of Taoiseach, so he won’t be voting Varadkar down.
For reasons of political good sense, I think Martin is right to soft-pedal. But the stain will stay on Leo’s up-to-now dazzling white shirt.
Butjob loss? Ah lads, lads – go aisy, would ye? The quality of mercy is not strained.
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