“How are things in the constituency, Paschal?”
“The ticket went well, thank you very much. Tickety-boo.
As moments pass, the Public Expenditure Minister’s bombshell revelation to the Dáil that he sold a total of 27 Fine Gael Super Draw tickets to the businessman who footed part of his 2016 campaign poster bill is unlikely to considered a contender for scandal of the year.
Perhaps it was the enthusiasm from day one, but the opposition’s outrage at Paschal Donohoe’s less-than-transparent poster arrangements in his central Dublin constituency more than six years ago sounded a little over the top.
Did Donohoe break strict campaign spending rules by failing to declare a favor given to him by successful businessman Michael Stone? He appears to have done so, although the Minister reckons that the cost of around four days of poster work and the hire of a van is just below the declaration threshold.
“I have to say that looks awfully convenient,” remarked Social Democrat co-leader Róisín Shortall after his deeply contrite explanation for his dishonest oversight.
Paschal just made a mistake. He believed that the three teams of two men in high-visibility jackets bothering the lampposts of Dublin Central on his behalf were acting unpaid and entirely voluntarily. That’s understandable. Who among us hasn’t gathered a few friends to take to the streets for free to put up campaign posters for politicians we don’t know since Adam?
Earlier in the day, ahead of the minister’s Dáil mea culpa, the Taoiseach told Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald that it was wrong for people to defame Michael Stone. He persuaded her with examples of her own party’s mistakes and failings in election spending but, disappointingly, failed to say “let she who is without sin cast the first stone”.
[ Who is Michael Stone, the one-time ESB apprentice who paid for Donohoe’s postering? ]
So many questions. Who paid for the Paschal posters? (Not all, mind you. Only about 150, the man himself reckons.)
Were they plastered around Dublin Central by half a dozen guys doing a nixer for their businessman boss (a friend of Paschal’s) or doing the work during office hours?
Was it a personal donation to the candidate or did it go through the Fine Gael party? (It was the second, the minister insists. It is not possible, say the opposition.)
Who paid for the use of that white van that ferried boys and ladders around the constituency for several days and evenings? Leo Varadkar said during Leaders’ Questions that it costs very little to hire a van, having hired one himself over the weekend just to find out the cost.
Obviously, it’s all to hell. Did they work during the day or at night? Because after nightfall would mean they hung Paschal’s photogenic dimples in their own time. “In broad daylight in broad daylight,” boomed Mary Lou Macdonald, because she had seen pictures of the hanging.
In his brief explanation to the House, the Minister gave as much information as he knew how much it cost a team of men to put up several posters over a total period of 10 hours. And then, in the interest of “transparency”, he admitted that he had personally sold Mr Stone five raffle tickets in 2020 for €344 and 22 tickets for €1,382 the following year.
An incredulous Piers Doherty found that, according to Paschal’s figures, the team was placing about two pillars per hour.
“It’s shockingly bad value,” independent CTO Thomas Pringle gushed.
But perhaps the six boys took extra pride in their task of making sure the posters looked absolutely perfect on their carefully selected lampposts. Many people in the constituency were impressed by the quality of the work.
Certainly a feature of the 2016 General Election in Dublin Central was the sheer number of voters who pulled back to see these exquisitely placed posters and wondered: “Isn’t the Paschal wonderfully hung after all?”
Meanwhile, Leo Varadkar made a hamtastic start to his first Leaders’ Questions as newly installed Taoiseach of the 33rd Dáil. “Deputy McDonald,” he blurted out, pausing for maximum dramatic effect. “I trust Paschal Donohoe.”
Oooh! Although it would have been a real sensation if he had said otherwise.
“I believe he is a man of integrity and a man of the highest standards and he is a man I have known for a very long time. And I believe he is someone we can trust and someone I trust. And I think deep down everyone in this room knows that.
“I don’t,” countered Paul Murphy of People Before Profit after hearing Paschal’s statement about tea.
Peadar Tóibín on Aontú, Sinn Féin, immigration and ambition
“If we push honest views underground, we just push those views into the hands of real racists.” This statement, regarding the hot-button issue of migration, is typical of Meath West TD and Aontú Party leader Peadar Tóibín, who likes to present Aontú as neither left nor right, but a party of “common sense”. Will this approach win Aontu many votes? It is now exactly four years since the party was founded, and while it has had few electoral successes so far, polls show it enjoys similar support to some of the longer-established minor parties. Peadar Tóibín talks to Hugh Linehan and Jack Horgan-Jones about what electoral success looks like for his party, the importance of the ‘culture war’ against ‘bread and butter’ issues and some thoughts on his former party, Sinn Féin. This episode is the first in a series about small parties. We’ll be back on Friday with a roundup of the week’s political news. With every subscription you’ll get unlimited access to the best of unique quality journalism from The Irish Times. Subscribe today.
Perhaps the Taoiseach imagines his bracing intervention will endure like his Lloyd Bentsen moment. His sharp opening response to Mary Lou McDonald’s allegations about his secretary’s campaign spending echoed that famous exchange from the 1988 US vice presidential debate between Democrat Bentsen and Republican challenger Dan Quayle. When Quayle compared his relative youth to that of John F. Kennedy, Bentsen responded, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are not Jack Kennedy.
The first session of the new political year began with the Taoiseach and Sinn Féin leaders sweetly exchanging threats of the season before crossing swords on Paschal posters, the name of the first government crisis since 2023. In the heated run-up before Wednesday’s lunchtime meeting , TDs from the combined opposition parties have vowed not to rest until Phibsborough poster boy Pascal appears before them to make a full statement on the poster affair and then be offered a ritual coal haul.
Some people might think that the amount of money is a bit deceiving. In or around a thousand, more or more a hundred or two, according to the Taoiseach and his minister, who had already apologized for forgetting to announce all the details of the dig.
“He only knew the full facts recently,” Leo told the House helpfully. However, money and calculating sums of it is a complicated business, as the Taoiseach later explained to Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit, who was not too bothered about his involvement in the play fight over the empty Paschal posters, preferring instead to talk about the people who have real money and real power and are consumed with increasing and consolidating it.
He said Leo would be “going around” Davos in the next few days to meet these bigwigs at their annual World Economic Forum, a “crude, grotesque” spectacle of the “growing inequality” between the super-rich and everyone else.
As they continue to amass their wealth and ordinary people here are ‘crushed’ by the cost of living crisis, could the government consider introducing a ‘modest’ wealth tax on our millionaires and billionaires?
[ Some billionaires on paper are actually ‘fur coat and no knickers’, Varadkar tells Dáil ]
The RBB spoke after the release of Oxfam’s Global Wealth Report, but the Taoiseach was not entirely sure about the methodology used by the organization to reach its conclusions. Were they talking about net or gross wealth, for example, he wondered? All things being equal, he seemed to think there wouldn’t be much point in taxing the rich here, as it might be a waste of time and effort trying to squeeze a few bucks out of our multi-millionaires.
“We all know from past experience that some people who are billionaires on paper or actually appear to be billionaires are only wearing fur coats and no underpants.”
Indeed. Who doesn’t know someone putting on all the outward appearances of filthy riches, when in reality their lavish lifestyles and trophy homes mask a hand-to-mouth existence and grinding desperation to find enough money to feed the kids.
“They have a lot of assets on paper. They also have a lot of debt and liabilities, and their actual net worth is negative or small.
God loves them. It would be heartless to even think of trying to tax them. And anyway, the Taoiseach added, most of the really big billionaires live outside the country for most of the year. Best not to trouble them.
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