A Mayo View: Browne is silencing his critics
When Luka Modric arrived at Santiago Bernabeu in 2012, Madrid-based tabloid Marca asked its readers for La Liga’s worst signing. Real Madrid voters swiftly labelled him the club’s “worst signing of the season.”
A total 32 per cent of them, in their infinite wisdom, decided the Croatian midfielder was destined for failure.
A year later, he was dictating top opposition in the Champions League, earning a Ballon d’Or in 2018 and securing four European Cups before his departure to Milan last summer.
Madrid fans, of course, are famous for this sort of thing. They’ll whistle and wave white handkerchiefs for their own players for a misplaced pass, while toasting them as heroes when the trophies roll in.
They are not unlike another cohort of voters closer to home, who occasionally confuse a noisy poll with sound judgment.
Last April, Newstalk convened its “Insiders Poll” of Oireachtas members and associated hangers-on.
Minister for Housing James Browne, barely three months into the most poisoned chalice in Irish politics, was named the “worst performing Minister.”
Some 57% ticked the box, as if housing supply could be fixed with a press release or a clever sound bite on Morning Ireland. I had the good fortune of interviewing Fianna Fáil’s second bite at the housing cherry, Minister James Browne, last week in Mulranny.
He struck me as thoughtful, even equivocal. A refreshing presence, and wholly unpolitical in a system that nowadays rewards noise over nuance. Some ministers arrive in a bombastic fashion: you hear them before you see them. They’re their own best champions, rarely leaning on aides or staff to ferry out their PR, but ensuring instead ensuring everything is tweeted.
Browne is different. His answers on the issues that matter in Mayo ticked the boxes. Of course, talk is cheap, and pledging zero tolerance on dereliction will be judged only by action.
Browne does not chase the limelight, and that’s a handicap in today’s politics, where the loudest often win.
Famously, David Cameron predicted the rise of Liz Truss through the Tory party before she had even won a seat for the Conservatives; his foresight was based on the fact that she attracted attention wherever she went. We know well how that one worked out.
Before the 2020 general election, Browne noted to his local press in Wexford: “With Leo, Simon Harris and Eoghan Murphy, the guys at the top, it's all PR, a case of here's a photograph of me. My issue with them is that we haven't had ministers actually managing the departments.”
A barrister by trade, and son of a TD, he appears more interested in reshaping policy than chasing front pages. The upcoming Budget will tell us a lot. This is a moment when Ireland could finally see positive steps on housing.
Certain parts of the country are already showing signs of progress, but it's all on the East Coast, a fact that is noted internationally.
We are sick of hearing about the global problems concerning housing, but Browne alluded to an EU Commission event in Denmark where housing ministers across the EU are looking at figures from this country and asking how they can replicate it in their native land.
From my own interview with him, it was clear Browne understood the specific concerns facing people in this county.
He has been willing to stand firm against the OPR, the planning authority hostile to one-off rural homes and anyone hoping to live outside a major town or city.
He spoke consistently about the need to allow people to remain in their own communities.
A simple line, but one that was rarely uttered under previous regimes.
Housing was always going to worsen before it improved. There is, unfortunately, no silver bullet.
Dereliction, planning blockages, Airbnbs, rising costs and lending practices are problems, but also possible solutions if policy and more importantly, enforcement is enacted.
His is an unenviable brief, but for a minister dismissed as “worst performing” just three months into office, we are only now beginning to see his imprint.