Mayo's senior minister can wait as FF leader's lieutenants get bogged down

The anger that boils over in Mayo County Council’s chamber every month rarely reaches Leinster House.

Last week it did.

Schools closed, hospitals ran on skeleton rosters and courts staff walked out on Wednesday as up to 300,000 public sector workers struck.

Every government has bumps on the road, and this one can see itself shaking from inside the car.

Fianna Fáil is under pressure on several fronts.

Its two leading heirs are each stuck in a dispute with no end in sight. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, is watching from the sideline.

Start with Jack Chambers. The Minister for Public Expenditure was once the obvious successor. Then came Jim Gavin.

Chambers was deputy leader and director of elections for Gavin’s presidential campaign. Gavin withdrew in October of last year, after the party backed him past Billy Kelleher by 41 votes to 29.

Backbencher James O’Connor accused Martin and Chambers of “extensive pressure” on TDs to back him. Chambers’s stock has dropped since.

Then came Jim O’Callaghan. The Minister for Justice was next in line. Then the fuel protests arrived with a bang, and barricades at refineries and ports. In April, O’Callaghan announced the Army was being called in to clear blockades, before gardaí had formally requested it.

Opposition TDs dubbed him ‘Rambo’ and ‘GI Jim’. Defence Minister Helen McEntee wouldn’t say if she had been consulted. Three young Fianna Fáil TDs, O’Connor, Ryan O’Meara and Albert Dolan, publicly voiced “real and deep concern” about the Government’s response.

That is Fianna Fáil’s problem in a sentence. The party is losing ground in Munster and the west. A Dublin barrister who announced the Army would clear rural blockades does not win it back.

Both men are now in disputes that won’t go away.

Chambers’s is the public sector pay row. The last deal expired on June 30. Budget 2027 set aside €1.2 billion for pay, which has been calculated as a rise of roughly three to 3.5 per cent.

The unions say that falls short. The INTO points to an ESRI forecast of 4.1 per cent wage growth across the economy next year. Meaningful talks are yet to start at the time of writing, as unions want a commitment on cost of living first. Chambers calls that a precondition and has dug his heels in.

It was the first national public sector strike since the crash. A second follows, and union sources have spoken of escalation in November.

O’Callaghan’s is the legal aid row. Since July 1, solicitors have received a flat €520 for each District Court case, regardless of how many appearances it takes. More than 200 resigned from the criminal legal aid panel.

The department says more than 600 remain on it. Solicitors say most active practitioners have walked. Figures cited by the Law Society show legal aid certificates fell 93 per cent in July.

In late July, the High Court ruled that 11 accused had their constitutional rights breached because they had no lawyer. Closer to home, Judge Vincent Deane told Castlebar District Court that solicitors skipping private cases was discourteous to the court. They have since returned, but only to assist in adjourning cases.

Judgment in John Quinn’s High Court challenge to the scheme is now due on Tuesday, November 3. High Court judges have urged both sides to settle it themselves.

The Chief Justice has said the dispute concerns all judges. O’Callaghan has refused mediation. He says it is inappropriate while the case is before the court.

Picking a fight with solicitors is rarely bad politics. For a former senior counsel, it was a strange one. People mock legal aid until they need it. Mayo’s courts, and the court clerks who are public servants themselves, will feel the pile-up into the new year.

Meanwhile, Martin has the best seat in the house. Speculation about his future centres on the end of Ireland’s EU Presidency in December.

He insists he will lead the party into the next general election. Some in his own parliamentary party doubt it.

Which leaves Ballina’s Dara Calleary. As Minister for Social Protection and for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, he has stayed out of the headlines.

He has regularly repeated that there is no vacancy at the top of Fianna Fáil, and that he isn’t considering it. Politicians say that until there is one.

Napoleon is said to have advised never interrupting an enemy while he is making a mistake.

Calleary has taken that to heart. If Fianna Fáil heads into a winter of discontent, the minister in charge of payments may be the man they turn to.