Leo Varadkar’s announcement that he is quitting politics brings the number of departing TDs to 28, including four who have been elected to the European Parliament plus Michael McGrath, Ireland’s nominee for the European Commission. More names are expected to join the list as the general election draws nearer. Considering that a mere 18 quit at the last general election in 2020, it is not hyperbole to call the departure of 17.5 per cent of TDs a haemorrhage. More worryingly, the impact on our body politic will be a veritable brain drain.
Varadkar is just one of six former party leaders in the current Dáil who will not be part of the next one. Also absent will be the recently replaced Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, Social Democrats founding joint-leaders Catherine Murphy and Roisín Shortall, ex-Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin, and the final leader of the defunct Progressive Democrats, Ciarán Cannon, all of whom are walking away from electoral politics.
Nine others who will not be returning have been Cabinet ministers and another seven have been junior ministers. The exodus threatens to render redundant any campaign sloganeering about the need for change because the next Dáil will barely be recognisable from the viewpoint of some constituencies.
Politicians privately concede that it is getting harder to attract new candidates for the Dáil
Even before the present Dáil is wound up, voters in Cork South Central are guaranteed to lose 50 per cent of their TDs – Simon Coveney, the former tánaiste and, most recently, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and McGrath, the former Minister for Finance. In Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael’s John Paul Phelan is stepping down; so is Sinn Féin’s Kathleen Funchion, who is off to the European Parliament in Brussels. Dublin South Central, Ireland’s most left-wing constituency, is losing the indomitable People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith, who could teach recent violent demonstrators a lot about effective protest politics.
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The extent of the change already underway is captured by Ivana Bacik’s newfound status as the Dáil’s third-longest-serving party leader following her election to the position only 28 months ago. The Social Democrats, Fine Gael and the Greens have all changed their leaders in the past 16 months.
It is healthy for parliamentary democracy that politicians no longer expect to keep their feet perpetually under the table once elected to the ivory tower of Leinster House. While it is essential that the way is kept open for the arrival of new deputies ambitious to make change, a wealth of experience is going to be lost when the current Dáil comes to an end. Between the two of them alone, Murphy and Shortall have 32 years’ experience in Leinster House.
Varadkar has gained invaluable knowledge about how to reconnoitre the political jungle, having worked in two coalition cabinets and done the seemingly impossible when he brokered a Brexit compromise with Boris Johnson. The value of such rare experience is illustrated by Bertie Ahern who, having resigned as taoiseach in 2008, has been advising the present Government and the last one on matters concerning Brexit and the Belfast Agreement. It takes time for first-time ministers to adjust to a civil service which, in some departments of government, can still evoke the old gag that the standard response to political will is political won’t.
The tectonic plates of Irish politics are shifting. Disinformation is winning the infowar
The reasons why politicians are leaving Leinster House in droves are manifold. Age or ill health are factors for a few, although Varadkar and John Paul Phelan are just 45 and Brendan Griffin, the Fine Gael Kerry TD who is off too, is three years younger. Others are weary from long hours travelling to and from distant constituencies, burnt out from the work pressure at senior level, or frustrated by the lack of scope to make a difference from the backbenches.
Politics can be a thankless job. Anyone going into it expecting plaudits ought to recall Margaret Thatcher’s view that, if she ever walked on the Thames, the headline would be “Prime minister can’t swim”. Varadkar must have understood what she was talking about when, as both taoiseach and a medical doctor, he helped administer Covid vaccines during the pandemic only to be accused of a PR stunt.
For a growing number of TDs, the disillusionment is being caused by “a coarseness [and] a toxicity in politics”, as cited by Cannon when he announced he was packing it in. That seems to have been an understatement in the week that Opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald has been directly threatened with murder and Varadkar revealed that he was advised for his safety not to go home on the night of the November 2023 riot in central Dublin. Potential new TDs would need to have their mental acuity assessed if they did not reconsider their aspirations on hearing about masked protesters being gathered outside the Taoiseach’s home and how the Minister for Justice’s young children had to be evacuated from their home because of a bomb threat.
Even before the present Dáil is wound up, voters in Cork South Central are guaranteed to lose 50 per cent of their TDs
Politicians privately concede that it is getting harder to attract new candidates for the Dáil. Any desperate drive to find bums for seats will, inevitably, have an effect on the calibre of those seeking election, which is why the current haemorrhage raises greater concerns about the quality than about the quantity of those departing the national stage.
The tectonic plates of Irish politics are shifting. Disinformation is winning the infowar. Lies about asylum-seekers’ social welfare payments and “unvetted” single men entering Ireland are stoking fear among all social demographics. While news reports of the anarchic violence in Coolock this week said the trouble-makers were mostly males in their teens and 20s, several of those who were arrested were in their 60s.
There is a sense that Ireland is on a knife edge. The country is experiencing the sort of polarisation evident in the US. This is all the more reason why an admixture of fresh energy and veteran nous – regardless of left and right politics – is needed in the Dáil and around the Cabinet table. As Spike Milligan said: “One day, the don’t knows will get in, and then where will we be?”