It’s hard to know if broadband is providing the mood music to the European and local elections, or if it is the other way around.
The more the controversy continues, the more it seems to be the latter. What has occurred has called into question the political judgment of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yet again.
All the evidence points to him pressing for the plan announcement against the wishes of a nervous Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe.
The view of the Minister’s Public Expenditure department on the project was so damning, it has made the National Children’s Hospital look like a minor infraction.
It has given the Fine Gael election campaign a jolt alright. The kind of jolt that flattens it and then pins it to the ground. In other words, the recoil has been more devastating than the shot. It has become all about damage limitation in Fine Gael.
The submissions and correspondence that came from Public Expenditure and Reform have made for extraordinary reading - I can’t remember reading such outspoken internal criticism in my time writing about politics.
Over the weekend, what Brendan Howlin described as the “paltry” investment being made by Granahan McCourt evoked another round of scrutiny and criticism. And there will be more as the documentation is parsed.
The focus today will be at the Joint Committee on Communications in the afternoon where Richard Bruton will be pressed to disclose the nature of the arrangement with Granahan McCourt.
As we report Fianna Fáil and other Opposition parties will press for answers on the plan today.
Bruton refused to confirm the €200 million figure given by Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed last week. He said the chosen bidder would be “on the hook” for injecting more money if costs run over.
And to the European elections . . .
It looks like it will be a one-week campaign. It might be the most important European election since we joined the European Economic Community in 1973, but nobody has told the people about that.
This reporter spent the day touring the Dublin constituency yesterday and found people veering between apathy and cynicism as we travelled from pillar to post.
The level of engagement or interest of the public is low. There is also a conflation of the local and European elections in some people’s minds, which just kind of illustrates that not everybody has the same interest in politics as the anoraks.
Local issues that are not really Europe related - particularly housing - are the ones that crop up most.
European elections are not very accurate weathervanes of how political parties are doing. Personality or catching a wave can do it for you. Look at Sinn Féin in 2014. It had a great election winning 20 per cent of the vote, but that was not repeated the local elections or general elections.
The party was enjoying a moment, and that’s why it is hard to predict the outcomes of the last seat, or last two seats, in the three constituencies.
It might all come down to the performances on the live debates next week, especially the debates on RTÉ. A strong performance might elevate an also-ran to a contender in an instant.
However, there are so many candidates in contention that it might be hard for anyone to separate themselves from the pack.
And still some are being excluded: the anti-eviction campaigner and candidate Ben Gilroy is pursuing a complaint against RTÉ after being excluded from the live debate.
In Europe, as happened in Britain, there is a growing sense of fragmentation and of a clear and present danger for the European project. There is a rise of right-wing and nationalist parties with a strong anti-immigrant message. They might disrupt the pattern of the next parliament and remove the domination of the centre-right European People’s Party. That big shift is not just discernible to the same degree in Ireland.
For all that, people should be aware of those big picture patterns. Like the anti-immigrant Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán being feted in Washington DC by Donald Trump. As Suzanne Lynch reports, Trump congratulated Viktor Orbán for doing a "tremendous job" as prime minister as he welcomed the controversial leader to the Oval Office on Monday.
“Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that’s okay, you’ve done a great job, and you’ve kept your country safe, the US president said. “I know he’s a tough man, but he’s a respected man,” Mr Trump said, adding the Hungarian leader is doing “the right thing” with his immigration policy.
That’s one of the big questions facing Europe right now, and we ignore it at our peril.
Best Reads
Olivia Kelly explores the possible cost of the proposed Metrolink.
A bit of a plug for Virgin Media News political correspondent Gavan Reilly's highly readable book on the the last nine days of Enda Kenny's reign as taoiseach.
Jennifer Bray reports that women caught up in the CervicalCheck scandal will have a six-month wait for payments.
Has Richard Bruton gone vegan? Not yet – too much is still at steak, as Simon Carswell reports from the British-Irish parliamentary conference.
Political editor Pat Leahy has some interesting analysis on regional breakdowns from our latest polls. While based on smaller samples, they suggest recoveries for both Labour and the Greens in Dublin.
Playbook
Cabinet
The Cabinet will approve plans to give more support for survivors of familicide, which has become a more frequent phenomenon in Irish society in recent times.
Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan will bring a memo asking his Ministerial colleagues to support independent reviews of domestic homicides as well as research into this crime. It will also recommend new measures to support the surviving members of the families.
The move has been prompted by the family of the late Clodagh Hawe and her three children, who were all murdered by her husband Alan Hawe, who then killed himself.
Unlike the UK, there is no mechanism to allow reviews of homicide such as these, especially when the perpetrators are dead. The family has sought more information on the murder, its circumstances and background history without avail
Dáil Éireann
14.00: Leaders’ Questions.
14.32: Order of Business.
15.02: Taoiseach’s Questions.
15.47: Parliamentary Questions where Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys fields questions from the Opposition.
18.05: Parental Leave (Amendment) Bill 2017. Debate on Róisín Shortall’s Private Members’ Bill. The Government has accepted this. It is a significant breakthrough for the Bill brought by the Social Democrats co-leader. It will mean that non-paid parental leave will be extended to 24 weeks from 18 weeks by 2020, and the maximum age of the child will be increased by four years, from eight to 12.
20.00: Private Members’ Business is tabled by Sinn Féin. It is the Thirty-Fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Right to a Home) Bill 2016. Its timing is co-ordinated with the Raise the Roof protest that will take place next Saturday.
22.00: Dáil adjourns.
Seanad
14:30: Commencement matters.
16.45: Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017 - committee stage, resumed, now edging close to 100 hours.
19.00: Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2018.
Committees
15.00: Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine discuss a Trócaire policy paper on feeding the world sustainably.
15.00: The Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment is discussing the National Broadband Plan with Richard Bruton, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment.
16.00: Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight is considering the public sector performance report from 2018 plus holding a discussion on equality, and disability, proofing of the Budget.
