The official reason for Deputy Eoin Hayes’ defenestration from the Social Democrats is that he misled the media over the exact timing of when he sold his shares in the technology company Palantir.
Twenty-three times, reportedly, he told assembled journalists (who apparently had nothing better to ask) that he had sold the shares “earlier this year before entering politics”. The truth was that he had sold the shares in July, a month after entering politics. He was off on his dates by a matter of weeks.
Now forgive me for perhaps being too credulous, but it strikes me that when a man tells a lie that inconsequential, that often, it is vastly more likely to have been a genuine error than a lie. Consider this: If he had simply said “I sold the shares in July”, would there have been any problem for him? I don’t think there would have been.
Now, before anyone gets any ideas, I have precisely zero sympathy for Deputy Hayes here: He is, like Robespierre, an example of poetic justice. The revolutionary racked, lashed, and dispatched by the very puritans he empowered.
Indeed, were this particular shoe on literally any other foot, then the owner of that foot could have expected no mercy from Deputy Hayes or his party. Deputy Hayes himself had nothing to say, earlier this year, when his party ditched a Jewish candidate, Orli Degani, for the apparent crime of being insufficiently committed to the defeat of Israel.
This is life in the puritan world of the modern Irish left, exemplified by the Social Democrats.
There is no reason to believe that at any time, Eoin Hayes has been anything other than absolutely sincere in his hatred and loathing for the State of Israel. There is nothing in the public record that suggests he has ever expressed any sympathy at all for any person or entity associated with that state. A look at his social media accounts, for example, records no reaction of any kind to the attack on Israel of October 7th 2023 – his first comment came two days later, when he announced his view that Israel was to blame for the war. There was not even as much as a word of sympathy for the Israeli victims.
Instead he has called for sanctions, bans, arrests, boycotts, and every other example of futility you could dream up. He has condemned and scorned, wept and wailed, grinded his teeth and all but rended his garments.
The Israelis ignored him. As they ignore every other person of his ilk.
But still: There’s no doubt where he stands.
But holding on to the right hatreds is simply not enough. You must also live the life of a puritan, and in this case that appears to mean that Eoin Hayes was simply not allowed to have a career if that career brought him in any way into contact with Israeli money.
The fact that Hayes was awarded 7,000 shares in Palantir worth (at the time of sale) a cool €200k would suggest that whatever else he is, he was good at his job. That is a large and considerable bonus. There is no suggestion of any kind in the public domain that any work carried out by Hayes advanced, in any way, the cause of the Israeli military (who are far from Palantir’s only client). No, this is simply a case of “man had job”.
This is one of those stories that tells us a whole lot more about the state of Irish politics than it tells us about Mr. Hayes.
First, it tells us that attitudes to all things Israeli in Ireland are truly demented. They have gone beyond the point of reason, or logic. A mere tangential association with a company that has in turn a tangential association with Israel’s defence forces is enough to provoke a political crisis.
This demented hostility is simply not to be found in mainstream politics anywhere else in Europe, or indeed the English speaking world. There is nobody sane who believes for one second that the defenestration of Mr. Hayes will advance in any way the cause of the Palestinians. This, instead, is about ritualising hatred of Israel for its own sake.
Second, it tells us that politics in Ireland is just fundamentally not a job for anyone who has had even moderate success outside politics. One thing we can say with relative certainty is that Mr Hayes, for all his faults, is one of very few TDs ever to have earned stock options from a company through his employment before entering politics. Richard Boyd Barrett and Matt Carthy, two of his chief critics, certainly won’t ever get into trouble because of their financial success before entering the political fray. Better to have been an absolute layabout before you got elected than to have been in any way successful, since your success will always be a political liability.
Third, it tells us the value that our politicians place on moral preening and moral purity over doing or saying anything of use. This whole sad tale is from the same vaults of quasi-religious absurdity that will grant us the spectacle of a three-week debate in March about what Meehawl Martin should say to Donald Trump in the White House. Or about whether Ireland has sufficiently condemned this, or that. Or about whether we have exported enough solidarity to our various pitied causes around the world. Or about whether we are “leading the world” on Climate Change.
The truth is, as it has been from the beginning, that not one single thing Ireland has done – or could have done – has altered the course of events in the Middle East since October 7th. The po-facedness of our national conduct over these past 14 months has been matched only by the sheer futility of it.
Israel waged its war, and won. Ireland raged, and raged, and raged, and all we have to show for it is a bald Soc Dem out on his ear. We’re a giant Students Union, masquerading as a country.