Ain’t no yahoo like a local Fianna Fáil yahoo. To get a glimpse of it in the wild, we go now to Senator Joe Flaherty of Longford, who spent some time on Thursday afternoon telling Shannonside Radio of his voting intentions when polling day dawns.
“The unfortunate irony of it is that Jim Gavin is still on the ballot paper,” Flaherty said. “And alongside his name is Fianna Fáil. So I’ll be voting for Jim Gavin. If Jim Gavin was still in the field, I would have still been voting for Jim Gavin. And as a Fianna Fáil man, and with a clear conscience, I’ll still be voting for Jim Gavin.”
If you listen back, there’s a point about halfway through when Senator Flaherty starts to stutter, as if he is suddenly hearing himself in real time. It’s like his brain is frantically trying to get a message to his tongue, telling it to STFU immediately. But it’s no use. As a Fianna Fáil man, and with a clear conscience, he’ll still be voting for Jim Gavin.
Let’s leave the good Senator to his musings now and move on to James Lawless, Fianna Fáil TD for Kildare North and the Minister for Higher Education. During the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday night, Lawless’s take on the party’s choice of Gavin to run for president was communicated to the outside world via RTÉ’s Micheál Lehane.
“James Lawless told the meeting that Jim Gavin was a strong candidate on paper who could build a coalition of Dublin, GAA, the Defence Forces and Fianna Fáil which was almost unbeatable,” wrote Lehane on X. “He said the party weren’t to know he would struggle on screen and lack confidence.”
[ The Irish Times view on the Gavin withdrawal: Fianna Fáil’s costly errorOpens in new window ]
Almost unbeatable! Now there’s a phrase. Famously, Gavin’s Dublin won three of their six All-Irelands by a point and two of them after a replay. Their greatest strength on the biggest days was, in fact, their uncanny ability to remain almost beatable. If anything, Almost Unbeatable would be a decent title for a book on Mayo during the Jim Gavin years.
Turns out, Mayo don’t have a monopoly on own goals. Gavin was supposed to be meticulous and strategic beyond measure, the ultimate Mr No-Stone-Unturned. It feels hard to square that now with someone who runs for president forgetting that he owes €3,300 to a former tenant.
And not just any former tenant – one who happens to be a Sunday World journalist. Co-host of one of the biggest podcasts in the country, in fact. Mark Twain said never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Jim did the 21st century equivalent. Worse, he seems to have done it without understanding it would be a problem when running for office.
Some of us know next to nothing about politics. We have our own little corner of the quilt to take care of and God knows we struggle enough at times to sound like we know anything about it either. But it shouldn’t have needed the most powerful political antennae in the world to understand that there was a landmine here. The real question is why nobody saw it ahead of time and saved Gavin from galumphing all over it.
It comes with a halo effect that rightly makes people in other sports roll their eyes
The simple answer is the GAA. Go back to what James Lawless said about Gavin’s potentially winning coalition – Dublin, GAA, the Defence Forces and Fianna Fáil. Of those four, the Defence Forces are a tiny constituency and Fianna Fáil keep finding new ways to alienate most people. As for Dublin, the fact that plenty in the city had to Google Jim Gavin should tell you all you need to know about his cut-through there.
No, the main reason Jim Gavin was on the ballot for President of Ireland was his involvement in the GAA. First as manager of the all-conquering Dubs. And later as chair of the Football Rules Committee. Micheál Martin took one look at his successes over the past 12 years and decided he was a plum candidate for the highest office in the land.
In doing so, the Taoiseach made a mistake plenty of GAA people are guilty of making from time to time. He forgot that it’s just a sport. Okay, it’s just four sports, but that’s all they are. Just sports. Just ways of passing the time and getting out of the house. No better and no worse than all the other ways.
The GAA is very good at telling high-minded stories about itself. About volunteerism, about community, about mental health and all the rest. About amateur games and professional standards and charitable causes. About a place for kids to go and learn about winning and losing and life lessons that will stay with them forever.
But of course, these are all just aspects of being involved in sport. Any sport. Doesn’t matter if it’s soccer or rugby or gymnastics or bog snorkelling. Someone puts up the nets and does the admin and runs a carpool WhatsApp in all of those too. Doesn’t even have to be sport – your kid will learn about life and community and volunteerism down at the local chess club or dance troupe just as well as in any hurling club.
There’s a fine line between being proud of the GAA and getting high on your own supply. Far too often, we fall the wrong side of it. It comes with a halo effect that rightly makes people in other sports roll their eyes.
Gavin won six All-Irelands. So what? By the time you read this, Stephen Bradley will likely have won his fifth League of Ireland title in six seasons. Nobody was kicking his name around for president.
And as for the FRC, somehow the ability to coax a room of special congress delegates into voting a particular way bought him a legitimacy that wouldn’t have been possible with any other sport. Imagine trying to explain that aspect of it to anyone who doesn’t watch Gaelic football.
“Well you see, the Ulster teams were putting 15 men behind the ball and Jim changed it so that they could only put 12 behind the ball and now you get two points for a long-range score and so the Taoiseach thought he should be president ...”
GAA exceptionalism is one of the dreariest reflexes in Irish life. The events of the past week took it down a peg or two.
It was long overdue.
