2 weeks Ago
Anyone looking at the results of the latest Sunday Independent poll would be unlikely to guess that this was a government that won a general election only two months ago. In question after question, dissatisfaction runs strikingly high. With tens of thousands of households still without power after Storm Éowyn, it is perhaps unsurprising that 61pc of people believe the Government has failed to handle the devastating fallout from the tempest adequately.
What should arguably be of even more concern is that a resounding 69pc have come to the conclusion that the Government is less concerned about people living in rural Ireland than in the big cities, while the same percentage believes the Government is simply out of touch with the interests of ordinary people. This was the first major crisis the new Coalition had to handle; and with climate change set to accelerate, according to the scientific consensus, it surely won’t be the last. Those affected were entitled to expect more from ministers than constant reassurances as to where they could get a hot cup of tea or charge their phones.
It is not as if the job of co-ordinating a response to Storm Éowyn landed in the laps of novices still getting their heads around the workings of government. With few exceptions, the most senior positions in the Cabinet are occupied by men and women who have been knocking around the corridors of power for many years. Yet they have still scrambled to meet the needs of the worst affected, let alone get to grips with the deeper questions the destruction raises about the fragility of Ireland’s energy infrastructure.
Housing remains the top priority of voters, but 80pc don’t expect the crisis to be fixed in the lifetime of this Dáil Dig deeper and the news only gets worse for the Coalition. Even a majority of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael supporters do not believe their parties should be dealing with Independent TD Michael Lowry in light of the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal and his conviction for tax offences. Yet it is on his raggle-taggle group of Independents that the survival of the Government depends.
As for the still unresolved row over whose Dáil speaking time those Regional Independents should be snaffling, the same number of Fianna Fáil supporters back the opposition as they do their own party. Complacency would be ill-advised. It says something for the divisions among the opposition that it has consistently proved unable to capitalise on the serious discontent at the quality of political leadership on offer in the country, even among those who grudgingly came out to vote for more of the same last November.
It could be that a sense of resignation explains the polling figures. Housing remains the top priority of voters, but 80pc don’t expect the crisis to be fixed in the lifetime of this Dáil. More than six out of 10 also say they expect to see an economic downturn, and most only have savings to last a few months should they lose their job.
Those are not conditions in which people are minded to take a risk. Facing economic storms as well as climatic ones, the natural instinct is to hunker down and ride out the worst. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste should be relieved all the same that they went to the country when they did.
An election in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn might have left them even shorter of a majority..
