It’s time for Micheal to start learning his lessons – no one believes it any more
TAOISEACH Micheal Martin likes the phrase “lessons must be learned”.
When confronted with ugly situations, it’s his go-to swerve. Who can attack someone who earnestly proclaims the need to learn from past mistakes?
But here’s the thing: like the boy who cried wolf, the Taoiseach’s mantra is trotted out so often it has become a mere sound, devoid of meaning. It goes in one ear and out the other without the slightest conscious registration.
“Lessons must be learned” is a busted flush. No one believes it any more.
This week, there were more “lessons to be learned” after the shambles that surrounded the secondment of the man who led the public health response to the pandemic to a top new job as an academic in Trinity College Dublin, paid for by the taxpayer.
Such was the furore — Tony Holohan was expected to earn in the region of €2million over the next ten years — he decided not to take up the job, and the Government was left to clear up the mess (of its own making) and “learn lessons”.
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Martin took the reins to proclaim last Sunday: “I think it’s regrettable given the fact that Tony has played a very strong role in bringing us through the pandemic (true). But I think there has to be full transparency in relation to all of these issues.”
He added, solemnly: “There will be a comprehensive summary and report from the secretary general in health to the Minister for Health (not made public yet), but I think certainly lessons have to be learned.”
I nearly choked. That nauseating Martin mantra again.
It’s kind of like a nervous twitch, it comes out of his mouth almost unconsciously. I was intrigued, so I did a bit of digging and, unsurprisngly, he’s had a multitude of lessons to learn, judging by his past use of the phrase.
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He likes lessons. All secondary school teachers do.
When he became leader of Fianna Fail in January 2011, one of the first things he set about trying to do was discard the party’s predeliction for boom and bust politics.
In his first address as leader he promised the Fianna Fail faithful: “We must learn the lessons of what we did wrong in recent years.”
In his first election as party leader, just a month later, Fianna Fail took a hammering, losing 51 seats. A rump of just 20 TDs, Martin among them, would spend the next five years in political purgatory, trying to “learn the lessons of the past”. Mea culpas all around.
Five years on, during the 2016 General Election campaign, Martin proclaimed that Fianna Fail had finally learned lessons and could now be trusted to be in government again.
A number of people bought it, and Martin’s Fianna Fail more than doubled its number of TDs from 20 to 44.
Lessons still had to be learned though, because it would take the 2020 General Election before Fianna Fail would return to power.
The Government alliance with Fine Gael was barely a month old when the pandemic struck. It would have “many lessons to learn”.
Champagne party
At the height of lockdown in June 2020, the department of Foreign Affairs hosted its famous champagne party at Iveagh House. In its aftermath, a government spokesperson said: “Lessons have been learned.”
They obviously weren’t, because Golfgate happened just two months later.
Then, in February 2021 amid the chaos over the EU’s move to restrict coronavirus vaccine exports outside the block and the ensuing worry over Brexit Britain invoking the Northern Ireland protocol, Mr Martin told reporters: “We’ve had that conversation and there are a lot of lessons to be learned.”
Later, in September 2021, after then junior minister Sean Fleming’s warts and all report into how Fianna Fail could reconnect with voters, Mr Martin told a meeting of FF TDs and Senators at the Slieve Russell Hotel that “lessons must be learned”. In the same month, during a political storm over the appointment of former minister Katherine Zappone as Special Envoy on freedom of expression to the UN without any open recruitment process, Mr Martin said: “Lessons must be learned going into the future.”
The Holohan debacle over the last two weeks shows that the lessons that needed to be learned were not.
Martin’s learning process is an ongoing project, covering a multitude of issues.
In November 2021, following the publication of the report into the 2017 R116 helicopter rescue tragedy, which killed four crew members, Mr Martin said: “We have to learn lessons from this tragic loss of life.”
In January this year, at an event in Trinity College Dublin to mark the 100th anniversary of the partition of Ireland, Mr Martin told the crowd of the need to “learn lessons” from the past.
A month later, Martin was back at the blackboard to proclaim that “huge lessons have to be learned” following a damning review of the care of children at the HSE-run South Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
A few days later, during a Dail debate on the housing crisis, he was at it again, fulminating: “We have to learn lessons.”
Lesson for this Friday is: I’ve learned my lesson. No more listening to Micheal blathering on about the need to learn lessons.
PUTIN'S A BEAST IN THE EAST
MAD Vlad’s despicable war grinds mercilessly on. Fifty days of relentless murder and for what?
Putin is waging war on the back of a fantasy he concocted about a history that never happened. He believes that Ukraine never really existed as a nation. He has delved into the myths of the 13th and 14th Century to convince his brainwashed subjects that Ukrainian citizens are really Russian and those that aren’t are imposters and Nazis.
Due to better tactics, Ukraine’s army has already defeated much larger Russian formations around Kyiv and Chernihiv. Tail between its legs, the Russian army is now concentrating on the East, in the hope of carving out a slice of the Donbass.
It may succeed, and Putin will be able to proclaim victory, of sorts. But it will go down in history as a giant defeat. Russia will remain in darkness for a generation, at least.
€5M KO FOR DAN
THE €5m bounty placed on the head of Daniel Kinahan represents the beginning of the end for the drug lord who proclaims he’s just a humble boxing promoter.
As well as a huge reward for information leading to his capture and conviction, the US government placed serious sanctions on the cartel boss, freezing accounts in its country’s banks, forbidding US firms from having any dealings with him. He was also placed on a no-fly list.
As the net closes in on his crime empire, Kinahan will be abandoned by those in the boxing game he did business with. His stable will lose all its fighters and, sooner than he thinks, he will be all alone as justice finally arrives at his door.
THE long evenings got me thinking about the long winters and why anyone would endure living in a place as cold, wet and miserable (weather-wise) as Ireland.
Well, the reasons this place is loved the world over are the very same reasons we choose to remain here.
We’re a decent, unbigoted lot, by and large; we enjoy ourselves when we can (often is the cure); we don’t take ourselves seriously and those that do (Bono) get a ribbing; we are kind to strangers (the rigour of emigration is in our DNA). We also have a way with words that charm.
This is why we stay here and endure it all.
More and more people want to come here to live. The more, the merrier, is what makes us richer.
MARINE WILL GET SINKING FEELING
FRANCE is a nation divided, as the electoral map of this week’s presidential vote, above, shows.
Far Right leader Marine Le Pen’s vote (the black dots) is concetrated in the North East, East, South East and South West. Her popularity is in working class towns and some cities that were once solidly communist. The rest of her vote is largely rural.
By contrast, Macron is popular in all the big cities and in Britanny to the north west and the Pyrenees on the Spanish border.
Being more popular in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux means he’s in the box seat to be re-elected for a second term.
The red dots on the map show where the hard left is strongest. The eastern part of Paris voted solidly hard left in this election, as did the cities of Marseille and Toulouse. Their candidate for the presidency, Jean-Luc Melenchon, narrowly lost out on reaching the second round run-off, pipped by Le Pen, who topped his vote by just 1.5 per cent.
Had he won, he stood a better chance of defeating Macron in the run-off.
So Melenchon’s supporters will be key to who wins in nine days’ time. He has told his voters NOT to vote for Le Pen, but he has not said they should support Macron either.
At the end of the day, however, despite their antipathy to Macron, many French voters will hold their noses and give him the nod. A Far Right France is something most French people could never contemplate, or tolerate.
If she does win, I’ll eat my bike – tyres and all.
REAL Madrid will win the Champions League.
Their performance in the first leg at Stamford Bridge against an exciting, attacking Chelsea was sensational.
Heading to Madrid for the return leg on Tuesday, 3-1 up thanks to the ruthlessness of Benzema, they seemed shoo-ins for the semi-finals. But Chelsea went at them and leading 3-0 in the Bernabeu, the Blues looked to have sealed an improbable win.
But Real fought back and, after 120 pulsating minutes, emerged victorious.
Manager Carlo Ancelotti has them purring and they are as fit as a butcher’s dog. They’ll be hard to beat.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
IT’S hard to believe it’s four years since Ireland lifted the Good Friday ban on booze.
Amazing how time flies. A part of me hankers for the old days. Because it was banned, a pint on Good Friday always tasted sweeter.
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A loophole in the old laws meant you could get drink if you were “travelling,” which led to packed-out ferries to England and train station bars filled with punters in possession of a ticket, but with no intention of travelling.
Today will be just like any other Friday. A shame really.