The art of deflection

BLAME GAME Deflecting questions by blaming the opposition is an evasion tactic an all too often seen in Irish politics.

Minister for Transport Shane Ross faced a series of questions in the DΡil last Wednesday about the Ten-T funding controversy. Asking the questions was Mayo Fianna FΡil TD Lisa Chambers. Minister Ross’s responses were instructive of the low level of political discourse in this country.
Here is a very important issue, the exclusion of the northwest from the Core network on the Trans European Network–Transport (Ten-T).
There are serious questions to be answered as to why it was removed in 2011 by then Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar.
That decision denied projects in the west a chance to draw funding from the Core fund, which has a kitty of hundreds of billions of euros for projects across the European Union.
Lisa Chambers asked a number of very pertinent questions about the issue. However, in his response, Minister Ross threw a few scuds at Fianna FΡil, stating it was they who bankrupted the country and left the then Minister Varardkar with no kitty to include the ‘Western Arc’, from Cork to Belfast, via Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Derry, in the Core network.
The minister is correct to say the Fianna FΡil governments that preceded Fine Gael’s assumption of power in 2011 had left the country in financial chaos.
But it is another matter to posit this as the reason for taking the Western Arc off the Core map. There was no immediate financial commitment in leaving the Western Arc on the Core map. Projects would have to apply individually when the Government saw fit to proceed.
And how, if financial constraints were even the issue, as Messrs Ross and Varadkar claim, was a railway line from Dunboyne to Navan added in Meath? And how was a route encompassing Limerick and the port at Foynes added if finance was such a problem?
We await answers to these questions.

Tiresome tactic
In the meantime, we must endure the tiresome political tactic that most parties, not just the current government, are far too fond of. The art of deflection.
Instead of answering questions about real issues, too many politicians dodge the hard questions and play the man, not the ball.
So we constantly hear criticism of Fianna FΡil’s record in government whenever a Fianna FΡil representative asks any sort of searching question of the Government.
Fianna FΡil are quite adept at this tactic too, whenever it comes to Sinn Féin raising issues. Sinn Féin’s very checkered history is always thrown back in their face when they pose questions of those in power.
No more than Fianna FΡil’s record with the economy, Sinn Féin’s past is worthy of scrutiny, but there is a time and a place for it. The electorate deserves better.
Local Minister Michael Ring brought up Fianna FΡil’s past when responding to questions raised by Lisa Chambers about Ten-T in The Mayo News two weeks ago.
In a statement issued on his behalf later that week, Minister Ring let rip at Fianna FΡil. He stated that Ireland did not have the resources to commit to the Western Arc because ‘the country was just emerging from the worst economic crash in its history. Deputy Lisa Chambers does not need to be reminded who got us into that mess’.
He went on to say: “Given that Fianna FΡil are so keen to reminisce to the earlier part of this decade, let us remind ourselves of the misery they inflicted on rural Ireland the last time they were in Government. After basing the economy around the construction and sale of houses and hotels, the property bubble burst and hundreds of thousands of people lost their livelihoods.”
We are not disagreeing with anything the minister is saying. No reasonable person could. We are wondering, however, about its relevance to this debate.
We wanted to ask some questions of the minister for last week’s paper on this issue, after we received his statement, so we rang him last Monday week.  
He refused to comment, claiming that The Mayo News had not rung him the previous week. We had. We left a message. He failed to get back to us. That’s fine. He’s a very busy man. But he is incorrect to suggest we didn’t give him the opportunity to comment.
The minister was critical of The Mayo News at an event in Achill at the weekend. Those comments can be read in the news pages.
He is entitled to his opinion in this regard, but he ought to remember it is not The Mayo News alone that is asking these questions. The huge reaction to our coverage of the Ten-T issue shows this is an issue that has exercised so many people, and those people want answers.
As Áine Ryan says very well in her column on the next page, newspapers have a responsibility to ask questions of people in power.
Meanwhile, we all await answers to crucial questions about the Ten-T funding.