In all honesty, it has been a struggle to maintain any interest in the ins and outs of what Simon Coveney said, or did not say to an Oireachtas Committee investigating the Katharine Zappone fiasco. We have had the spectacle of one minister, Simon Coveney, spinning the country an obvious cock and bull story about why he deletes his text messages, while, at the same time, another minister, Leo Varadkar, happily shares his own text messages, providing an invaluable insight into how utterly dull and banal life at the top really is.
All the while, the facts of the matter have become embarrassingly clear to all but the wilfully blind: Simon wanted to do a favour for his old friend Katharine Zappone. Zappone was very eager for a job, and was in turn texting Varadkar asking if there was any word about when she might get one. We were previously told there was no lobbying for the job, and now the texts prove that claim to be a lie. Unless we are to believe, of course, that Zappone’s texts about the job, and invitation to Varadkar to join her for some canapes in the Merrion Hotel was entirely unconnected to her pursuit of that same job. Thanks to the text messages, we also know that Varadkar himself had no clue what his own Governments laws were, and had to ask Zappone to be “sure that it was legal” to attend.
If the whole thing was submitted as a plot to the writers of Coronation Street or Eastenders, it would be rejected because the plot point where any of this is denied is so stupid. No good drama, even a farce like this one, should rely, for believability, on the audience being as plain thick as the protagonists.
One of the things repeatedly said in the past few days about this scandal by supporters of the Government is that average people, outside the media, and social media, bubbles, simply do not care. “Nobody”, they say, “is talking about it”. And that, in their defence, is true. But people are not remaining silent because they consider this to be a non-scandal. Most of us are just so utterly bored by how pathetically dweebish the whole thing is to bother getting outraged. The public have been beaten into submission by the sheer unadulterated dullness of this scandal. At least, with Charlie Haughey, you got brown envelopes and heaving bosoms. With this lot, you get chummy text messages from wine bars and a Minister pretending that he still operates with a Nokia 3210.
It is unbelievable, to be frank, that there are still poor, hapless, Fine Gael backbenchers being dispatched to radio studios to tell listeners that there was no cronyism here. This whole thing is the definition of cronyism. How many potential appointees to jobs have the phone number of their prospective employers, and invite those prospective employers for lunch in the country’s most expensive hotel? This job, we are led to believe, was routine: How many routine appointments warrant text message conversation between two senior ministers, checking with each other about how progress is going?
No, this was not about appointing a person to represent Ireland. This was about getting a job for Katharine Zappone, their old mate. Everybody in the country knows it. Everybody in Fine Gael knows it. Even the Taoiseach, lord help him, knows it, but he can’t do anything about it because he is terrified of a general election, and not being Taoiseach any more. He’d rather suffer this humiliation – and indeed, he was abjectly humiliated by the Independent’s Philip Ryan yesterday – than lose his nice leather chair and people holding the door open for him and addresses to the nation on the six one news. That’s what it all comes down to, and every last one of us in the country is fully aware of it.
Nobody will resign. Nobody will pay any price at all. Eamon Ryan will continue to have his regular naps, unperturbed by what is going on around him. The Taoiseach will continue to perfect his cute little concerned frowns. Leo Varadkar will continue to be slippery, but entirely unimpressive. Simon Harris will probably continue fantasise that his time is coming. Coveney will continue to play the merchant Prince. Zappone will swan around America pretending to be someone of significance. Mary Lou will continue to cackle and wait for her turn. Senators will continue to preen. Fine Gael backbenchers will continue to say whatever they have to say to hold their seats. The media will continue to pretend that all of this matters. The homeless will continue their sleepless nights.
And we, the public, will continue to be bored stiff by the collection of absolute mediocrities that pretend to govern the country. Not a single one of them deserves to be re-elected, but, then, we reach the eternal problem: Who else is there?