Poor Roderic O’Gorman. Public expressions of deep sympathy and understanding for the Minister have taken on the status of alayhi as-salām in official Ireland, in recent months. The arabic phrase, translated as “peace be upon him”, is something that Muslims are expected to say every time they reference the prophet Muhammed, or any other prophet recognised in their religion. Just as a Muslim in the Levant must say “The Prophet, peace be upon him”, so, it seems, must Irish commentators in good standing say “In fairness to poor Roderic O’Gorman”.
There were a few examples of it at the weekend: Writing in the Irish Times, Cormac McQuinn wrote that poor Roderic is in a “no-win situation” when it comes to refugee accommodation, destined to be criticised no matter what he does. Writing in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago, DCU’s Professor Gary Murphy lamented that poor Roderic had become “the political poster child for online abuse”.
In a televised debate in which I took part some weeks ago, the journalist Alison O’Connor was another to lament how poor Roderic had been isolated and let down by his cabinet colleagues, deprived of the resources and supports necessary to do his job. Even opposition parties are sparing in their criticism: poor Roderic is a well-intentioned fellow (he is a green, after all) who’s been hung out to dry by the capricious blueshirts and the canny Fianna Fáilers.
Outside of public statements, speak to just about any paid-up subscriber to the hadiths of official Ireland, and you’ll see and hear the same thing: An almost performative degree of sympathy for poor Roderic, drizzled, as a friend once wrote, with extra-virgin head shaking.
The narrative goes like this: Roderic, you see, has no good choices. Ireland is bound when it comes to migration by our solemn and unbreakable legal and moral obligations, rarely defined but seemingly handed down on tablets of stone atop Mount Carauntoohill after the voice of the Migrant Rights Council boomed out to the first Irish Green from a burning bush: Thou shalt lead my people to tents in the Wicklow mountains, for forty days and nights shalt they wander the roads of Wicklow, before the promised land of Mount Street is returned to them.
Roderic may not send people home. Roderic may not accommodate them because the rest of the Government has failed on housing. Roderic is, in effect, a martyr, accepting the sticks and stones and homophobia of the dreaded far right; crucified for the sins of his cabinet colleagues.
It is, not to put too fine a point on it, nonsense.
There is no single Minister more directly responsible for the migration crisis presently facing Ireland than Roderic O’Gorman.
If one accepts the relatively simple proposition that migration has two sets of factors – push factors and pull factors – then we should concede that the Minister is not responsible for push factors. He did not start the war in Ukraine, or the conflict in Syria. He is not responsible for the poverty of eastern Europe or the deprivations of Africa. No Irish Minister is. The factors driving people to leave their homes cannot be laid at the door of the Irish Government.
When it comes to “pull” factors, though, there is no Minister more responsible for attracting migrants to Ireland specifically.
It was Roderic O’Gorman, and nobody else, who entered office with an explicit promise – tweeted in multiple languages – to offer every new arrival into Ireland their “own door” accommodation within six months, and to abolish direct provision.
It was Roderic O’Gorman, and nobody else, who informed the cabinet that Ireland could accept 200,000 Ukrainian refugees, and took on responsibility for organising their accommodation, leading to this figure being broadcast internationally.
It was Roderic O’Gorman, and nobody else, who oversaw and advocated a policy which gave benefits to migrants to this country that are now being withdrawn because they were so far out of step with the rest of the European Union, resulting in Ireland becoming a disproportionately attractive place for those seeking a destination to migrate to.
When it comes to the Mount Street tent village farce, it was Roderic O’Gorman’s department which organised the failed evacuation of the encampment to the Wicklow Mountains over the weekend.
Many of these basic facts are broadly ignored by the “poor Roderic” caucus, partly I think because to blame Roderic is to blame Irish policy for the mess. The “poor Roderic” group, by contrast, does not want to blame Irish policy: If – and only if – they concede that we have a migration crisis, then the first thing they’d argue is that it’s not our fault. Like most things that go wrong in official Ireland, this is not something we did, but something that has simply happened to us.
To blame Roderic O’Gorman is to concede that Irish policy contributed to the crisis and made it worse, and since official Ireland backed the policy wholeheartedly, this cannot be acknowledged. Roderic has become a sort of stand-in for liberal commentators: By defending him, and casting him as an unwitting victim of circumstance, they’re somewhat conveniently doing the same for themselves: Poor Roderic, and Poor Us: Nobody saw this coming.
The other factor here is revealed in the writings of Gary Murphy referenced above: Because Roderic has become something of a hate figure on the right, saying “poor Roderic” is a quick tribal signifier that one may despair of Government policy but one is not one of those people. You know, the kind that say he should resign and tweet photos of Roderic with gay rights icon Peter Tatchell as if standing beside Tatchell was something of a bad thing, as opposed to a signal moment in the life of any Irish progressive in good standing.
When you hear “Poor Roderic”, this is what you’re hearing, ultimately: Not political analysis – at least not serious political analysis – but a tribal signal. It’s akin to Enoch Burke on the other side: The “right” has a legion of people who’ll privately despair of Burke’s conduct in the courtroom, but who feel obliged to defend him in public since that’s what tribal loyalty and the need for social media “likes” demands.
In both cases, our democracy would be better served with more honesty. The “poor Roderic” narrative is bunkum. He made this crisis. Not by himself. But it wouldn’t have been this bad without his very significant contribution.