Politician of the year
Independent TD for Kildare
Catherine Murphy
was on top of the water issue from the outset, pinpointing problems the Government did its best to ignore until people power forced it to listen. A rock of sense in the Dáil, Catherine was also a strong advocate for the rights of the homeless.
Mick Wallace and Clare Daly showed that hard work and perseverance can pay off in politics.
The duo’s refusal to be sidetracked on the issue of the Garda whistleblowers led to eventual vindication for the gardaí concerned and landed Wallace and Daly an impressive haul of political scalps, including the minister for justice and the Garda commissioner.
Daly has also been a fearless and passionate advocate for the thousands of Irish women who have to travel abroad every year for abortions.
But the award goes to Frances Fitzgerald, who succeeded Shatter in Justice and immediately brought an unfamiliar calm to the troubled department.
Since her appointment, Fitzgerald has proved a safe pair of hands in a calamity-prone administration and is an assured media performer. It is no surprise that her name has crept into discussions on the future leadership of Fine Gael, with some saying she could be the compromise candidate between alpha males Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar.
Senator
Two women, Fianna Fáil’s Averil Power and Independent Jillian van Turnhout, have impressed in the Upper House with their work rate in areas such as children’s rights, adoption and gender equality.
But the award goes to FF’s Ned O’Sullivan for alerting the nation to the terror lurking in our city skies: seagulls losing the run of themselves.
Opposition politician
In previous years, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald would have been in the frame, but the shine has gone off her star with a recent string of petulant Dáil performances.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin is still standing. Not only that, but his party is improving in the opinion polls, and Micheál emerged as the most popular party leader in the most recent ones. Not a bad showing for a man who is trying to marshal a small parliamentary party shot through with sulkers and sideline snipers.
Micheál’s Dáil performances have improved and he is coping with the Taoiseach’s constant harping about the last, disastrous Fianna Fáil government.
But that’s some big albatross to have around his neck if he wants to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of old Fianna Fáil.
Surprise package
With a brashness that veers towards arrogance and with something of a deficit in the charm department, Alan “Legacy” Kelly won’t win any awards for humility. But the former MEP and first-time TD is a young man in a hurry and he doesn’t mind saying so. Joan Burton’s deputy leader took over the Department of the Environment as the water charges issue was approaching boiling point.
He has delivered on a new regime of payments and dealt with almost all the complaints about Irish Water which saw voters take to the streets in protest.
Unlike his predecessor, Phil Hogan, one suspects Kelly has no problem "micromanaging". When homeless man Jonathan Corrie died sleeping in a doorway across the road from Leinster House, he pledged to take action on the homeless crisis.
And it seems he has.
Even some Labour colleagues who are not that enamoured of his robust style are making approving noises.
Tammy Wynette (Stand by
Your Man)
The early money was on
Enda Kenny
and Eamon Gilmore, who stood by Alan Shatter for far longer than they should have. But in the closing stages of 2014, a runaway winner emerged. The Tammy Wynette crown goes to Mary Lou McDonald for playing Nancy Reagan to Gerry Adams’s Ronnie during the Maíria Cahill affair.
The smiling Sinn Féin deputy leader stood by her man as revelations emerged about how sex offenders within the movement were banished across the Border to spare the organisation embarrassment. No matter what sordid little details dripped from this disturbing episode, Mary Lou’s belief in her party leader never wavered, and her dispiriting response was always: “I believe Gerry.”
Most desirable political gift
Only one winner here: The Enda Kenny plate and mug set. Be the envy of your Blueshirt friends with this super ceramic tribute to the Taoiseach. They were flying out of the Fine Gael Ardfheis – a fiver for Enda’s mug on a mug and a tenner for his face on a plate. Not to be confused with his head on a plate, which is what some of his backbenchers will be demanding next year if things get any worse for the Government.
Brawn of Boyle Award
(No art but with added elbow): Fine Gael backbencher Frank Feighan for his, er, robust defence of his party leader when Enda met some noisy protesters during a visit to Roscommon.
Where in the world?
Independent TD Mick Wallace takes the runner-up spot for his decision to abandon Dáil business and go to Brazil for the World Cup. Life in Leinster House is no match for the beautiful game.
And the winner is former Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan, who was dropped from the Cabinet in July’s reshuffle but Enda cushioned the blow by making him Minister of State for the Diaspora. Lots of nice foreign travel there.
Never said a truer word
Fianna Fáil veteran Willie O’Dea silenced the mutterers against Micheál Martin’s leadership with this little injection of reality: “I say this with the greatest respect to my colleagues – I respect each and every one of them. I look around the table in my mind’s eye and I don’t see the messiah, and when I look in the mirror I don’t see him either.”
Right enough, it’s not exactly Charisma Central in the FF parliamentary party. Éamon Ó Cuív, anyone?
Worst apology
Congrats to Enda, trying unsuccessfully to take the heat out of the John McNulty IMMAculate Selection stroke fiasco: “I take responsibility for this having evolved to what people might imagine it is.”
Now that’s what I call gratitude
Former Garda commissioner Martin Callinan decided to retire before his period of service was up, and this after the Cabinet voted to extend his term in office until next year. Of course, he may have been sacked, which is what everyone believes except the Taoiseach and his backbench mouthpieces.
Enda can’t remember the events leading up to Callinan’s “retirement”. The Taoiseach has appointed a retired Supreme Court judge to buy him time – sorry, investigate the unprecedented circumstances he so conveniently forgets.
Niall Fennelly reports in spring.
Bet Enda can’t wait.
Sinn Féiner of the year
There can be only one winner. Ever ever.
Gerry Adams
, prolific tweeter and letter-writer to
The Irish Times
(he’s a bit sensitive to criticism) and party leader for 31 years without as much as a hint of a heave or a public peep of dissent from his disciples. That’s not normal, some might say. But not Gerry. And they all believe Gerry.
M
é
féiner of the year
Phil Hogan. Where to start? Alarm bells were sounding over Irish Water at the beginning of the year, when Big Phil was still minister for the environment and in a position to take early control of the situation. Instead, he smirked away the questions while making a virtue of his lack of involvement in the process. “I don’t micromanage,” he said. Big Phil had the Big Job in Europe in his sights and would soon be leaving the petty concerns of domestic politics for a rump-fattening guaranteed term as EU commissioner in Brussels. Now the Government is trying to micromanage its way out the political catastrophe he left behind as a parting gift.
Politics as usual award
(Formerly known as the Democratic Revolution Prize.) This goes to the Government for its reaction to a procedural slip-up which handed the Opposition the majority on the Joint Oireachtas Inquiry into Embarrassing Fianna Fáil over the Banking Crisis. When Micheál Martin asked Enda Kenny when the Committee was going to begin its work, he replied it couldn’t start because the Government didn’t have a majority on this much-vaunted independent, non-partisan body. “How do I know what your members will do? I don’t know.” The Government eventually imposed two more senators – one Fine Gael, the other Labour – on the committee. Fianna Fáil Senators muttered darkly about Communist Russia and Hitler.
Independent TD Stephen Donnelly resigned from the committee. Never mind, Stephen. With the ECB refusing to turn up, bankers hiding behind lawyers, and the first witness declaring the inquiry won’t find anything new, you won’t miss much.
Quote of the year
The winner is Daniel O’Connell. Alright, so the year was 1823, but it still applies: “There is a moral electricity in the continuous expression of public opinion concentrated on a single subject, perfectly irresistible in its efficacy.” If only the Cabinet had realised this before getting it so wrong on the water charges. They now face moral electrocution. After Enda’s
annus horribilis
, can he do enough to rescue his Government’s fortunes?
