{"id":250200,"date":"2025-12-25T03:07:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/250200\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T03:07:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:07:32","slug":"cormac-lucey-the-political-talent-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/250200\/","title":{"rendered":"CORMAC LUCEY: The Political Talent deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the November 1982 general election, Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael won a combined 84% of the national vote.<\/strong> Recent polling puts combined support for the two parties at just 35%. While leaders like Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald bestrode the national stage as political and intellectual giants, today Miche\u00e1l Martin and Simon Harris work hard to imitate leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back in the 1980s, political power was concentrated in the hands of those elected by the people. But in the meantime, a lot of power has been taken by (or given away to) outside bodies like the European Union, the Health Services Executive or even, in the case of the media, Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With politicians today holding less governmental power and with party politics becoming ever more fractured the D\u00e1il resembles a souped up county council more than a national parliament. A direct consequence has been a noticeable fall-off in the caliber of candidate offering themselves for national election. This then further feeds the perceived need to devolve ever more power to \u201cexpert bodies\u201d. And we must face a carousel of even weaker individual candidates at following elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fear not! Thankfully this structural problem, of TDs\u2019 personal caliber declining, looks like it may be partially addressed in 2026. There are many signs that Miche\u00e1l Martin (teacher) is going to replaced as leader of Fianna F\u00e1il by Jim O\u2019Callaghan, Senior Counsel (the highest rank of barrister in the country). Over at Fine Gael, there is equally excited talk that Simon Harris (started two university courses and dropped out of both, career politicians since the age of 24) will be replaced by Dr Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Many in the media are getting tremendously excited. But what is the excitement all about?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of it is down to the theatrics of Leinster House and the excitement of competing lists of supporters for this faction or that faction. Part of it down to the usual campaign tactics, gaffes and embarrassments. And part of it is down to the competitive horse race element where people wonder whether their favoured candidate will win. It\u2019s little different from a US high school election on steroids. It\u2019s a soap opera that allows political correspondents to posture as all-knowing courtiers carefully rationing their inside knowledge to the public. This, inside the beltway, trivia is little more than farmgate gossip elevated by considerations of public policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what would be the implications on government policy of replacing Martin with O\u2019Callaghan or Harris with MacNeill? It\u2019s very hard to see any significant implications. For starters, whatever media stories may suggest, In Ireland government policy is made by the cabinet. While in the USA or France, the setting of policy is the prerogative of the president who has a free hand in selecting the members of the cabinet that will implement his policies, it\u2019s different in Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Broadcast media blurs this distinction: it subliminally treats the Taoiseach as being the governmental equivalent of the president of America and France. But the Taoiseach has far less power that those presidents. That means that we can expect far less change if the identity of the leaders of FF and FG change over the coming year. That \u201clittle change\u201d expectation is only underlined by the fact that Jim O\u2019Callaghan and Jennifer Carroll MacNeill are already in charge of two key ministries: Justice is largely responsible for managing crime and immigration while Health is one of the biggest spending departments in Irish government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a bigger reason to expect little change in government policy if O\u2019Callaghan and\/or Carroll MacNeill take over the leadership of their parties: they have done remarkably little to change policy in the government departments that they currently lead. Instead, they seem to have focused their energies on sending a message to the public that they are better than their predecessors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead of fundamentally changing policy on immigration, for example, Jim O\u2019Callaghan has tweaked it by organising more deportation flights. He could have operated from the assumption that those arriving in Ireland, seeking asylum, have come here from a safe third country and that their appeals for asylum are therefore fundamentally flawed. He could assume that Ireland\u2019s very generous treatment of asylum seekers is operating a strong pull factor. And he could have decided to counter that with a strong push factor by locating all unprocessed asylum seekers or failed asylum seekers on islands off the west coast with the legal minimum of sustenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

O\u2019Callaghan has done none of these things. Instead of successfully managing government asylum policy (currently costing the state close to \u20ac2b annually, equivalent to around \u20ac800 p.a. for every person at work) he has successfully managed his image by presiding over a few more deportation flights than his predecessor, the hapless Helen McEntee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a similar story over at Health where Jennifer Carroll MacNeill cuts a far more fluent and authoritative figure than Stephen Donnelly, the Fianna F\u00e1il minister who had earlier been one of the founding members of the Social Democrats. There are several substantive policies she could enact at Health but she has chosen not to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She could pay hospitals a set amount for each medical procedure and thereby force operational efficiencies. Some years back, her department had planned to roll out a \u201ccase mix\u201d hospital payments scheme before it backed away from asking the medical community to operate efficiently.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill does not preside over a department that meaningfully promotes health \u2013 she sits on top of a department that fights sickness. Her department currently spends most of its money on the 5% of the population who are unhealthy rather than on promoting general health by reallocating resources to get the remaining 95% of the population to live more healthily. She could use her department to emphasise healthy living rather than operate as a pot of infinite resources to fund procedures for the unhealthy.<\/p>\n

Both O\u2019Callaghan and Carroll MacNeill \u2013 in many ways representing the very best that the Irish political system has to offer \u2013 are emblematic of the hollowing of western democracy that the late political scientist Peter Mair wrote in his seminal work \u201cRuling the Void\u201d. They are both key representatives of a politics that better communicates the needs of government to the people than it channels the needs of the people to government. Whether they replace their current party leaders is a case of much ado about nothing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the November 1982 general election, Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael won a combined 84% of the national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,10471,125803,1067,179,18,13,14,6,135,19,17,11,12,15,16,5765,5,790,44,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-250200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-cormac-lucey","12":"tag-culture","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-micheal-martin","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-simon-harris","29":"tag-top-stories","30":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115778004103105936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}