Shadow of scandal hangs over Dáil like dark cloud

A sense of low-level crisis is hanging over the Dáil like a Cumulus cloud. Maybe it’s the after-effects of Brexit but even this week’s positive Exchequer figures (tax revenues are running €720 million ahead of projections) have failed to temper that feeling that it might be 2008 and 2009 all over again.

What the Government didn’t need was a handful of other embarrassments hanging over it.

For one, there is the scandal of Console, which is getting worse by the day. Now on top of that another controversy over very generous non-disclosed executive pay has cropped up.

And again it affects a Section 38 Agency, this time the St John of God group. A total of over €1.6 million was paid to 14 executives in 2013. That payment was not disclosed to the HSE apparently on “professional advice”.

The optics are bad. It has echoes of the controversies from three years ago surrounding executive pay and conditions at the Central Remedial Clinic and Rehab.

It’s a reminder too that the Government has not come to grips with this issue. Coming hot on the heels of the Console scandal it has not been a good weekend for the Government in terms of its handling of governance in the charitable and so-called voluntary sectors.

Those images of the interim chief executive repossessing the top-of-the-range Mercedes and Audi that Paul Kelly and his wife were driving were really bad, really bad.

We have had a Charity Act in place since 2009 yet none of the provisions that give it real teeth (investigating financial irregularities and preventing dodgy fund-raising) have been commenced.

Frances Fitzgerald has now promised to fast-track the commencement of the Part 4 provisions to early September. That will give the regulator enough powers to go in and investigate charities like Console where there is dicky stuff going on.

If that wasn’t enough Mick Wallace’s private members Bill on abortion split the Cabinet with the Independent Alliance members insisting on a free vote. Enda Kenny was very adamant about collective Cabinet responsibility at last week’s meeting of Ministers, delivering a 40 minute lecture on the same topic.

There were only two possible outcomes to this. One was the Government breaks up. The second was an embarrassing climbdown from one side or the other. Shane Ross was defiant, even to the point of disagreeing with the Attorney General’s advice that the private members Bill was unconstitutional.

Then John Halligan tweeted to say he would be supporting the Bill.

This has the potential to bring this fragile coalition to its knees before it has even started to walk. There were signs earlier in the week that Fine Gael was going to take a hit on it, despite all the grandiose talk of collective responsibility.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.