Una Mullally: Government's biggest task now to claw back public trust

Whatever happens next, this Government will find it extraordinarily hard to claw back public trust. They’ve brought it on themselves, and the succession of unforgivable scandals, stupidity, terrible communication and confusing messaging, along with an aura of incompetence, is just not acceptable. If the Government is both coach and management, and the public are the players, then they’ve lost the dressing room.

The Clifden golf dinner event feels like a scandal with a very Fianna Fáil flavour, and smacks of the deluded and detached sessions of the party’s Galway Tent-era of gormless hedonism.

But while Fine Gaelers have enjoyed sniggering from the sidelines at Micheál Martin’s chaotic cat-herding approach to his party being one of three in power, let’s not let Fine Gael off the hook, for their great and good were at the hooley too: Phil Hogan, Jerry Buttimer, Brian Hayes, Paddy Burke, John Cummins. At least Dara Calleary – chief whiner when he wasn’t gifted a ministry which he has now thrown away – had the sense to go sooner rather than later, unlike Phil Hogan,who has never encountered a scandal he didn’t want to brazen out.

There was no need to manufacture or whip up the rage, as it was bristling on the surface

It’s beginning to feel as though this Government is operating in some kind of vacuum with an inbuilt generational lag. This is not the 1950s, it is not the 1980s. The public has moved on. Our standards are higher.

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We expect intelligence and decency and cop-on. Indeed it’s the people, not the governments, who built social movements that changed our country for the better in recent years.

But it often appears that large tracts of these two parties are stuck in the 20th century, where winks and nods constitute “getting things done”, backbiting and jostling happen centre-stage without any care for how it may look to the audience, and a sense of entitlement and arrogance reigns. Where is the humility, the empathy, the sense, the competence?

Under a bus

The mealymouthed pseudo-explanations that were designed to deflect any sense of personal responsibility and throw the hotel under a bus are ridiculous. Anyone walking into that scenario knew it breached the guidelines.

So either they’re stupid, or they’re not being straight. Donie Cassidy, one of the organisers, is himself a hotelier. How on earth could he have thought the event was acceptable when his own businesses are encountering the limits and requirements of public health guidelines daily?

No wonder the country is fuming. An incredible episode of Liveline on Friday, where caller after caller detailed their own personal sacrifices, was simply heartbreaking. There was no need to manufacture or whip up the rage, as it was bristling on the surface. It was in many ways a cathartic moment for the country. People across the nation have sucked up the hardship. They’ve watched milestones evaporate and cried at videoed funerals.

They’ve lost loved ones and jobs.

They’ve suffered brutal pay cuts and have found themselves on welfare for the first time in their lives. Throughout it all, our sense of social cohesion, solidarity, our collective efforts and robust community spirit have pulled us through, barely. One wonders why we are even looking to this Government for leadership, when we know that we had it within ourselves and each other all along.

We're in the middle of a global pandemic. Can they not just get it together and get through this moment?

But there is also a much broader outcome that is even more serious than this scandal alone. The behaviour and attitudes of the golden golf circle creates a wider distrust in the political establishment, and the perceived “elites”.

Politicians are always at pains to depict themselves as decent folks doing a difficult job, and many conservative journalists and commentators also bemoan the degradation in public discourse. Yet successful political scandals don’t just damage a government, they damage a democracy. Trust is failing.

Resentment

If there isn’t accountability and proportionate repercussions that satisfy what is by and large a reasonable public, then the resentment that bubbles underneath, and that remains unprocessed, will begin to fester. The damaging thing for society is that such resentment may find pressure valves that are slightly less about solidarity and empathy and more about frustration boiling over.

People don’t want to hate politicians. They want them to do well. Even after Fine Gael and Leo Varadkar had an abysmal election, people rallied around the caretaker government because we needed it to work. Since then, this Government has distracted and interrupted itself with self-made scandal, when all people really want is an effective, cohesive administration that successfully charts a way through this storm. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Can they not just get it together and get through this moment?

Public trust breaking down and turning against politicians as a class can have disastrous consequences for social cohesion. We have seen what happens in other countries when distrust in an “establishment” is weaponised by people who prey on a collapse in accountability and in turn use it to bolster their own interests and desire for power.

Look at the anti-mask protest in Dublin on Saturday. This Government needs a reset, or we need an election. How is the Government meant to get over the massive speed bump of a budget, when they keep throwing obstacles in front of their own clown car administration?

And, throughout it all, the public is collectively gritting teeth and getting on with it. They say you get the politicians you deserve, but what have they done to deserve us?