In fairness to James Browne, Fianna Fáil’s Minister of State at the Department of Justice, he did not say that his boss, Helen McEntee, had been brazen enough to take maternity leave twice, leaving her “assistant” – as Browne’s FF colleague Jim O’Callaghan styles the junior minister’s job – quite overwhelmed.
Browne did say that the Department of Justice is “clearly overwhelmed”, and that “I as Minister of State have done 50 per cent of all the legislation in that department” and “a junior minister shouldn’t really be carrying that level of weight in a department”.
Why shouldn’t he? What was he implying? Had he been asked to carry too much of the burden for McEntee, Newstalk’s Shane Coleman wondered? “No, but you’ve had the Taoiseach who has been in there for six months and so has Minister Heather Humphreys as well,” said Browne. “I just think it’s notable that you can’t have a situation where a minister of state is going to have to carry all that legislation.”
When the implied criticism of McEntee’s maternity leaves became full-blown irritation, Micheál Martin, Browne’s party leader, explained that it was all a misunderstanding. Browne’s point was that the department’s “huge” workload needed to be divided into two, he said. A reasonable point. Browne’s words were indeed preceded by his vision of separate departments of Justice and Internal Affairs. But if the remarks were “completely misinterpreted” as Martin suggested, that too was reasonable.
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If the Department of Justice is “clearly overwhelmed”, as Browne states, then obviously that’s the salient point – one that he as a member of Government with privileged inside knowledge should have been making for years, with urgency, gravitas and precision, regardless of election timing or party affiliation. Why refer, even by implication, to McEntee’s leave periods since, as he noted, two top Government figures had stood in for her? No reason at all, apparently. Just dropped it in, like ...
There is a wider context, of course. If Browne is truly shocked at the blowback, he must have missed the angry flea circus constantly buzzing around the most senior woman in Fine Gael, who also happens to be his boss.
Helen McEntee entered office with a clear agenda that included – but was obviously not confined to – tackling long-neglected issues such as hate crime and domestic and sexual violence. Being a powerful woman politician with those womanly concerns naturally upended some of the alpha lads in both FF, FG and assorted Others, who took to calling her versions of woke crusader-in-chief during mainly anonymous hissed briefings.
That comes in handy now as Micheál Martin aspires to take control of Justice in the next government to “make Ireland safe again” – the MISA party, if you will – as if housing, health and education hadn’t proved sufficiently challenging for his party.
Willie O’Dea followed up by calling McEntee “the worst minister for justice in the history of the State” (Ray Burke, Seán Doherty, anyone?), layering on the Irish version of Trump’s American carnage shtick. He didn’t quite claim miscreants were eating the cats and dogs, but said “neighbourhoods have literally gone to hell with antisocial behaviour”. The former junior minister for justice in three long-ago governments and cabinet minister throughout the economic crash continued: “People are afraid to walk the streets, are even under threat in their own homes, while during all her period as Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee concentrated on woke issues to the exclusion of what she should be doing.”
Note: O’Dea voted his full confidence in McEntee 11 months ago. That was four months after he posted the following about her on his website: “The public want her to focus more on delivering safe streets than on playing to the woke gallery ... The Minister must dramatically increase garda numbers and resources to show that the streets of our towns and cities are safe and friendly places for all.” Why a dogged pursuit of violent domestic abusers or racist hatemongers and a desire for safe and friendly streets are deemed to be mutually exclusive is a conundrum her critics really must address for themselves, urgently.
McEntee is as vulnerable to criticism as anyone who has ever juggled the poisoned chalice of minister for justice (Charlie Haughey was the only one who went on to became taoiseach). Her record on retaining and building garda numbers has been slow. Her hate-speech Bill was flawed, if seriously misrepresented by some. Her inner city walkabout in August 2023 with the Garda Commissioner was pure gesture politics, though such appearances are a fixture and requirement of political life. But it is the very deliberative attempt to hang the sneery “woke” word – as defined and scandalously harnessed by Donald Trump’s Maga movement – on the woman that distinguishes the sniping from the norm.
No minister for justice is a sole operator. Every policy McEntee pursued was sponsored by taoiseach Leo Varadkar. She shared the Cabinet table with four full-throated Fianna Fáil ministers and a Fianna Fáil rotating taoiseach called Micheál Martin, and shared a department with a Fianna Fáil junior minister who claims to have done 50 per cent of the work. In fact the Fianna Fáil backbench spokesman on justice Jim O’Callaghan – who scornfully declined Browne’s job four years ago – seems so impressed by her, and by extension her FF “assistant”, that he has accused her of copying his ideas. Another tough conundrum for a party seeking to claim the credit while staving off the blame.
McEntee disputes O’Callaghan’s claim but really, who cares? Electorates expect every minister to take good ideas from anywhere and run with them. They also expect grown-up politicians to do them the courtesy of assessing their public office holders on their record, not on crude, silly labels that double as dog whistles.