Macdara has been on hiatus, but only on this first day of spring has he been able to reflect fully on the ideological reasons behind his torpor. To recap: the Party of permanent power in Unoccupied Ireland has undertaken a round of negotiations that took far longer than it should have, given that the outline of the new Government was clear from at least the day the ballot boxes were opened, and arguably for some time beforehand as well. Best enemies Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, interchangeable for generations, and in power together for years, will effortfully push themselves out once again upon the Sea of Government, this time using some right-wing independents as their oars. Now the standard metaphor in Ireland for the junior coalition partners is of course the mudguard, but your correspondent is struggling to find something novel to say in this tired situation, so he will stick with oars.

So what was it that has roused the present writer to put some venom in his pen and start writing once again? It was the realisation that his state of Stupor was exactly what the Partionists wanted. The overwhelming mode of the period since the election has been Boredom. Even the Establishment shills of the Irish Times have admitted to how dull the Government formation talks were. So do not be fooled: the world is burning, the country is suffering multiple crises, and those who would have you close your eyes to it all are winning.

Let us struggle to focus on two stories that have disturbed the illusion of nothingness in the last few weeks. Firstly, the Rightist—sorry, Rural—Independent Group. This crowd of clownish non-entities thought they had accomplished an extraordinary coup in getting one of their own appointed Ceann Comhairle before they negotiated a deal with the Partionist Party and then announced their intention to sit in Opposition. In the scrappy Dáil sitting that followed, the Ceann Comhairle was revealed as an overpromoted amateur, the RIG as dislikable chancers, and the government as cynical and lazy manipulators. Even the Liberal Right who agree with the Government on all particulars—poverty is good, migrants are bad, Northern Ireland is a completely separate place et cetera—were livid. The Left and the Liberal Right made common cause for a day. 

What an old-fashioned stroke! Almost charming. They’re back, without a doubt. Hanging around with the earnest Greens, too stupid even to see their own venality, was bad for them. This is what we need: open corruption. The man who had just led the negotiations for the Programme for Government, and who—in the words of a High Court judge in throwing out a defamation case he had taken—“did not dispute that he engaged in tax fraud”, had no sooner promised to support the Government with his RIG coevals, than he announced his intention to interrogate the Government from the opposition benches…a Government in which his RIG peers sit at Cabinet. So accustomed are the Irish establishment to acting as their own opposition, that they think they can literally spread themselves across Government and Opposition benches at the same time without anyone noticing or raising a complaint.

The other recent controversy, also related to the grubby deal the Partionists did with the RIG, was to appoint that familiar species in the Irish political jungle: the Super Junior Ministers. Now what Macdara finds noteworthy is not the fact that they did so, as this has been happening for decades and is an obvious byproduct of coalition politics, given the greater need to buy off multiple parties. What interested your correspondent was that the Irish Times has only now noticed what Macdara was able to figure out based on his Junior Cert CSPE classes: that this arrangement was unconstitutional. Bunreacht na hÉireann mandates that there be a maximum of fifteen Ministers. Appointing Super Juniors to sit at Cabinet was clearly a means of getting around this restriction, as Varadkar has just admitted in one of his strange though characteristic outbursts. Listening to one of their number explain why and how the arrangement was unconstitutional, the usual Irish Times podcast crew each had to admit individually that they sort of knew without knowing, or never gave it any proper thought, or, yeah, something. There can be no clearer way for them to reveal themselves as a cretinous group of régime-syntonic hacks unable and unwilling to provide any serious challenge to their friends in Government.

They want us to be bored, let us pay attention. This is going to be a mess.
Postscript: The north-east of the country has been unusually quiet as well (perhaps they have been busy watching Kneecap on repeat?—which was how Christmas was spent in teach Mhic Dara). Last year three of the larger parties changed leaders, with the SDLP picking their only viable option, incidentally proving Macdara correct. As of the current writing, no one other than the present writer seems to see a problem in the Deputy First Minister being not only unelected, but cheerfully squatting in the seat of a man accused of the most vile crimes. The Occupation Administration is never quiet for long; it does not take a person of great predictive powers to imagine that this year the cadaverous Occupation will resume its death throes.