Unhappy government bedfellows
Former Minister for Transport, Tourism, and Sport, Shane Ross, talks to JOHN DONOHOE about his new memoir of his time in cabinet
"Sure she didn’t do it any harm," declares Shane Ross, after Regina Doherty had a go at ‘In Bed with the Blueshirts’, his memoir of his time in cabinet during the last Government.
Like circus ringmaster PT Barnum, the former Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport believes there is no such thing as bad publicity, and is grateful to the former Meath East TD turned senator for her promotion of his book on the Claire Byrne Radio Show, as she criticised him for betraying cabinet confidentiality.
Ross is following a long line of government insiders who have penned memoirs, from Gemma Hussey to Sean Duignan and even former Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald, a prolific writer. Regina (who doesn’t feature too prominently at all), wasn’t happy with him telling tales out of school.
"Gemma didn’t go into as much detail of cabinet," Ross admits to the Meath Chronicle in a call as part of his book promotion tour.
"But towards the end, I was taking it down verbatim because I knew I was writing then, and I didn’t want to get a word wrong. Gemma didn’t do that so much.
"It was important stuff, particularly on the Attorney General and what he said to the cabinet about Frank Clarke and was important to get right.
“That was pretty detailed. There was a bit of a bust down in the law library, but that’s what you want, a bit of controversy!"
Indeed, it was this same Attorney General, Seamus Woulfe, and his colleagues in the Law Library that have been the source of much bother for the cabinet and government that replaced Shane Ross’s Fine Gael-Independent Alliance coalition, ever since that Golfgate dinner in Clifden.
The current Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, said this week that she is to bring proposals to cabinet to abolish the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, following the controversy over Seamus Woulfe’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Reform of the judicial appointments system is something that had been red line for Ross in Government, and he had almost succeeded in having it completed when the election was called.
"None of the political parties like judicial reform, because they like appointing judges," Ross says.
"But they are now embracing it because the Seamus Woulfe situation has forced it on them."
While Fianna Fail had also been supportive of judicial reform in his initial government exploration talks with them in 2016, they never got as far as specific details.
The marriage of Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance was one of inconvenience, Ross agrees, as his book outlines the animosity between the two sides in government, particularly during Kenny’s time.
"We were the last ones standing," he says. "There was no national enthusiasm for Fine Gael and us. All the others had fallen early on. The Greens went down, The Social Democrats and Labour got out. They all thought the no government could be formed that would last any length of time."
He says Finian McGrath and himself would have preferred to go into Fianna Fail, if the numbers were there.
"It was a very unnatural, unwilling marriage. It started off on the wrong foot. Even after agreeing a programme for government, when we should have been saying we’re all friends now, it’s all over, we started off still hostile, at first cabinet meeting, and it carried on for a long time. We weren’t pulling in same direction."
He admits that his description of Enda Kenny as a political corpse after the election didn’t help. Then, the Government almost fell within weeks over the Independents’ demand for a free vote on Mick Wallace’s fatal foetal abnormality bill, which Fine Gael gave in on.
"We were really feeling each other out, how far down the independent route we could go, and they were feeling out how far they could go," he says.
Ross says that Kenny was confrontational, and thrived on rows, whereas Leo was conciliatory.
"Kenny would ask how we going to defeat the Independent Alliance on this one, whereas Leo would make a call and try find a way around it."
But he says he finished up on good terms with Kenny, who backed him on his judicial reform bill.
Ross also describes his battle with the vintners and his fellow cabinet ministers on the drink driving legislation he introduced to close a loophole from Noel Dempsey’s time, when Fianna Fail and Labour rowed in behind him (Labour opposing its own leader’s stance), due to pressure from the road accident victims supports groups.
"The vintners were quite nasty and they are very powerful, and ran an extraordinary campaign against the drink driving bill," he says. "They took us on all guns blazing. I was surprised by the venom and enthusiasm which they opposed it. And they were winning it for a long time."
Ross wasn’t sure he was going to get it through the cabinet, but Leo Varadkar supported him, even though many Fine Gael ministers didn’t.
"I had got it through the cabinet, but the Dáil was initially against it, until the victims’ groups put pressure on the TDs," he says.
Ross has had a short but colourful ministerial career, with the sport portfolio meaning he also oversaw the implosions of the Olympic Council of Ireland and the Football Association of Ireland, both of which he deals with in the book, and while he says he is not looking for any legacy, he is happy that there has been a complete overhaul of the governance of both organisations after the Pat Hickey and John Delaney eras.
He holds up his hands to his social media and photoshoot gaffes, and talks of dealing with the civil servants, as well as his last few months in a caretaker government (when, like the aforementioned Ms Doherty, he was no longer a TD , but still a minister, dealing with the Covid crisis).
But was he not rubbing Fine Gael up the wrong way by calling the book ‘In Bed with the Blueshirts’?
"Maybe it was a bit aggressive. They do regard it as a pejorative term. I just thought it was a good title for a book, a bit of colour in there. ‘A memoir of a minister in government’ wouldn’t sound half as good."