What happened this week between Leo Varadkar and Pearse Doherty was tunnel politics, the Dáil version of what went on between Limerick and Clare hurlers in the tunnel of Semple Stadium last weekend.
The touch paper for the argument in the Dail on Thursday was a reference Doherty made to a dinner hosted by Varadkar to mark10 years of Fine Gael in Government. He tried to portray it as the elite celebrating while ordinary people suffered.
Varadkar responded with a detailed account of Mary Lou McDonald’s visits to the United State and Australia, with lavish fundraising dinners, attempting to show that Sinn Féin was also no slouch when it came to being an elite.
There is a history of personal antagonism between Varadkar and Doherty. Over the past two years, the Sinn Féin finance spokesman has metaphorically led the charge on the Garda investigation into Varadkar’s passing of a confidential file on medical contracts to an acquaintance in a GP lobby group.
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He brought it up again in the Dáil in his follow-on question saying somebody who was being investigated under the Corruption Act “would be a bit more humble” in responding.
That’s when the gloves came off and it really personal. Varadkar brought up Doherty’s prosecution from the 1990s when he was found guilty of abusing a garda in Dublin in the early hours of the morning and received the probation act. Later Doherty said he was involved in a “very minor breach of the peace” .
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The specific details Varadkar had at his disposal about Doherty and Sinn Féin suggested some kind of wider party strategy or playbook against the main Opposition party. But the likelihood is that Varadkar had probably banked that information waiting for Doherty to make an issue of the investigation into the Tánaiste.
Part of the core duties of each party’s research team is briefing papers harshly criticising their opponents on policy, governance, and — if it transpires — personal and collective failures of standards. After the budget last October, Fine Gael distributed an 18-page dossier specifically rebutting and criticising Sinn Féin policies and spending promises.
There is no doubt Fine Gael is running an ongoing negative campaign against Sinn Féin, as does Fianna Fáil. But that’s the nature of how politics plays out nowadays. Mirroring that is an equally potent negative campaigning strategy by Sinn Féin against the Government parties. It all makes for dirty hurling, especially during key exchanges in the Dáil.
