If it’s Thursday, expect another Kit-Kat apology.
Wednesday, and Niall Collins should have the Dáil’s undivided attention. Or most of it anyway.
At the beginning of last month, the Minister of State and Fianna Fáil TD for Limerick County found himself in hot water over inconsistencies in a planning application he submitted 22 years ago for a house on land owned by his family in Patrickswell.
He kept his head down amid growing Opposition demands for him to come into the House and explain himself, standing his ground as the clamour for accountability grew ever louder. But even a politician as stubborn as Collins was not going to tough this one out.
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To nobody’s surprise, he bowed to the inevitable.
But he did it when was his opponents’ backs were turned.
Just like that Kit-Kat ad where a panda nips in and out on roller skates when the photographers waiting hours to take its photograph turn away to enjoy a chocolatey snack.
That was Niall Collins on Thursday, March 2nd.
He might as well have been on roller skates when he darted in and out of the near empty Dáil chamber at the tumbleweed time of day and delivered a brief statement at speed, catching everyone on the hop.
Opposition TDs complained bitterly in the aftermath, but it made no difference. The loudly sought explanation had been given and it was good enough for the junior minister’s political superiors who declared the matter closed.
A terrible blow for the tricoteuses of Kildare Street whose fingers are worn to the bone knitting at the foot of the Leinster House gallows, only to be denied the reward of a head on two successive occasions now.
Damien English was the last victim, back at the very start of January. He hardly put up any resistance.
Next into the tumbril a couple of weeks later was the Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohoe, who suffered some minor discomfort but easily escaped the guillotine.
Then nothing until early March, when the very reluctant Collins was carted into the chamber without notice. He lived to fight another day.
Nearly two months have elapsed but it’s time to get out the needles again. Niall is back and the Opposition is oiling up the mechanism in a second attempt to finish him off.
He is in the same spot as a result of another report published by the Ditch, the investigative website which has put the wind up politicians by trawling through old planning applications and Standards in Public Office (Sipo) declarations, posting its catch online, and creating a feeding frenzy among the social media seagulls.
This latest deep-dive into the Limerick planning archive has yielded a yarn from 2007 when Collins was an ambitious county councillor on the cusp of landing a Dáil seat. While he was plotting his political future in December 2006, his GP wife Eimear O’Connor was exploring the possibility of purchasing some council land with the intention of building a medical centre on it.
The subsequent chain of events leading to the eventual sale of the land two years later is at the centre of the latest controversy. The then Cllr Collins attended a council subcommittee meeting where an official proposed that the land be put up for sale on the open market. All seven councillors present agreed.
But then matters get complicated. In the few months between that decision and Collins’s election to the Dáil a sale was agreed, but this wasn’t finalised until a year later when a full meeting of the council gave the deal the green light. Government politicians have been at pains to point out that this local area meeting was just an “advisory” one and only a full council meeting can authorise a sale.
When it finally happened, Collins was well entrenched in the Dáil.
But the Opposition smells a rat. And a big one at that.
Why didn’t the aspiring TD absent himself from the room when the matter of the land which his wife had her eye on came up for discussion at the Local Electoral Area meeting? A question, indeed, which the Taoiseach and other senior Government figures were pondering on Wednesday before the Dáil resumed for the week.
Journalists were keen to hear their hot take on the latest details to emerge about the land sale in Patrickswell where Dr O’Connor emerged as the highest bidder and clinched the deal in 2008 but didn’t, in the end, build that medical centre.
In fact nothing happened for over a decade when she finally received permission to build a terrace of five two-storey houses.
Patrickswell, where all good Collins planning stories begin.
The Ditch published its story last week. The Minister of State finally issued a statement on Monday night. It didn’t calm matters. Paul Murphy of People Before Profit took to the plinth to say he would be raising the sale, and the involvement of the then councillor Collins in agreeing that the land should be sold by the council.
He started the ball rolling after Leaders’ Questions, where the housing crisis took precedence again. The Opposition was merely biding its time.
“On the face of it,” declared Paul Murphy, it looks like Niall Collins was in clear breach of the code of ethics for councillors. It could be “criminal conduct”.
This was the second time the Limerick TD was before the Dáil with questions to answer about a planning issue, said Sinn Féin’s Padraig MacLochlainn. “It couldn’t be more serious.”
Labour’s Ivana Bacik agreed, as did Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats.
Another statement was demanded.
Everyone agreed that there would be no scuttling into the chamber this time to read something out very quickly with no scrutiny from opposition deputies.
“We can’t have that again,” shuddered Ivana.
“We need to have a proper forward-and-back on this,” said Catherine.
The Taoiseach is in no mood for in-chamber interrogations. He has been hauled in for a grilling and it wasn’t pleasant.
He remarked that he doesn’t believe in staging such question-and-answer sessions in the Dáil, and said he was speaking from personal experience.
“This place is a parliament. It is not a kangaroo court.”
That comment went down like a dead wallaby. The Opposition had no intention of letting up.
Sinn Féin’s Mairead Farrell weighed in with more questions. Is Leo Varadkar satisfied that Niall Collins has not breached the Local Government Act?
The Taoiseach is “confident” he hasn’t.
Paul Murphy was incensed by the Taoiseach’s “incredible attitude”.
So too was Peadar Tóibín.
Suddenly, the word “corrupt” was being bandied about. The Taoiseach was accused of not telling the truth by pretending that deputy Collins’s “corrupt behaviour” does not contravene the law, stormed Murphy.
Tóibín revealed that he knows of cases where Government politicians have voted on the rezoning of lands where family members benefited.
Really? Who?
The Taoiseach hit back, accusing him of abusing Dáil procedures (he was supposed to be asking a question on the economy) and abusing Dáil privilege.
“Corruption is a threat to investment. It is a threat to business and it is a threat to society,” said the Áontu TD for Meath West, making the economic link.
The Government is behind Collins, for now. Varadkar says the Dáil is not the place to try a person.
But the Minister for State will plead his case, nonetheless.
Frank and upfront in full glare of the Dáil or in dismissive craven Kit-Kat fashion.
