Summer break looms for political classes

The end is in sight. It’s going to be one of the hardest weeks of the whole year, but those intrepid climbers can see the summit (Mount Peak Holiday Season) ahead.

It is the last week before the summer break, and as you would expect there is a flurry of activity.

Paschal Donohoe will unveil the summer economic statement on Wednesday. There’s been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on how much can be spent. At this stage it’s obvious that the so-called rainy day fund pushed by Michael Noonan is going to get whittled down, with some of the money being used for capital spending.

How much of the “savings” after 2018 will be used is the question. Certainly Fianna Fáil has objected to the fund being abandoned entirely, so at least some of it will be retained. It will be interesting to see how much or how little!

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And, as Fiach Kelly reports, the low VAT rate for tourism may be a target.

That’s going to be a hard sell for Donohoe, though, if he wants to push it, given the anecdotal evidence of a discernible fall already in British tourists, affected by Brexit and the fall in sterling.

Clearly summit fever is also afflicting some. Among them is new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. On Primetime last week, with his comments in relation to the Jobstown trial, he decided the best way of letting a sleeping dog lie was to give its tail a yank.

In terms of unnecessary interventions this took the biscuit. It wasn’t like the Maurice McCabe comments where Varadkar’s comments changed the course of events, and indirectly ended Alan Shatter’s career.

Here, his intervention seems to be going nowhere. If he is the politician who calls it like it is, he must also realise he is the politician who has the power to sway it like it should be. It’s no good issuing an edict without actually doing anything about it. We had Bertie the Bystander. We don’t need Varadkar of the Bar Stool.

It must be said, however, that the inconsistency of some Garda evidence was an issue. The point is it wasn’t the main issue. That was the unfathomable decision by the DPP to proceed with a prosecution that magnified a minor altercation into a national event.

There was also the inability of the office to deal with the brazen social media onslaught that the indefatigable Paul Murphy and his comrades were involved in.

In fairness to Murphy, his skills as a propagandist are nonpareil. It conspired to turn the Criminal Courts into the venue for an all-singing, all-chanting Christmas pantomime.

In the wake of the verdict, some of the language and gestures directed at Burton and her assistant were vile. The failure of the prosecution seemed to give licence to some to repeat terrible slurs. There was also some silly reaction, not least Joan Collins’s demand that Burton and Katherine Zappone leave public life.

Varadkar followed it up with another gesture of generational change. Instead of Enda Kenny’s boring newsletter to the party faithful each week telling them about all his gaiscí, Varadkar will instead deliver an equally boring video telling them about his gaiscí.

Note to self for Leo: Cut the video by half, and then cut it by half again.