Tough mission for Cannon as he faces hundreds of angry parents
Date Published: {J}
The story goes that when Transport Minister Leo Varadkar was refusing to budge on no more funding past next Christmas for Galway Airport, that he issued a grim warning during the discussions on what was still to come down the line in the area of spending cuts.
Varadkar is reputed to have told the TDs from the West that, though the news was tough on no funding for the airport, that particular cut would be among the easiest to defend in the months to come.
There was a sullen reminder of this on the main RTE television evening news bulletin in the past week when Taoiseach Enda Kenny was met by a large group of protesters up in arms at threatened cuts in A&E services at Roscommon County Hospital.
Kenny was his usual affable and approachable self as he walked over to meet the protesters . . . he got a handshake from one or two of them all right, but then he met local TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan who studiously kept the arms folded.
In the event, all Kenny could do to greet him was to touch him lightly on the elbow . . . but it was a stark reminder that times are going to get tougher for this Government, with Galway East’s new Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon facing one of the toughest battles of all.
In the past week health became the area of focus with thousands involved in protests over cuts in accident and emergency services which locals say they won’t accept.
Indeed, the cuts were raised at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting last week where Health Minister Dr James Reilly appears to have got a bit of an earful. ‘Failing to communicate’ is the backbencher way of saying they don’t like what’s happening!
The Taoiseach had made it clear in the Dáil that, in the case of Roscommon, he would not defend a unit which might not be considered safe – at that Parliamentary Party meeting, meanwhile, people like Paul Connaughton TD and Senator Michael Mullins were pressing for key appointments, which are sanctioned and approved, to be filled in Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe. (They were wrongly reported as ‘having a go’ at Minister Reilly).
Meanwhile, their constituency colleague Cannon now has the unenviable task of trying to get parents around the country to agree to planned cuts in school transport, and pay for some of it.
For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.