Helen McEntee
JUSTICE MINISTER (as we speak) Helen McEntee has been pleading via the media and in person with her former rival and now leader, Simon Harris, not to sack her from justice. But while Simon may wish to come across as a magnanimous victor and retain her in Cabinet, the particular post he has in mind for Helen of Navan comes with a distinct whiff of schadenfreude.
Time was when McEntee appeared to be the Fine Gael future, with one of the top three or four jobs in Cabinet as justice minister, with party leader Leo Varadkar and special advisor Brian Murphy having her back then and into the future. Also, a splendid general election in 2020 saw Helen retain her Meath East seat, while her own sense of schadenfreude, if any, would have been satisfied with the defeat of her constituency rival, Regina Doherty, who is now leader of FG in the Seanad. Thus, many in FG then saw McEntee as the leading candidate among the next generation of potential party leaders.
At the same time Harris, the real threat to Helen’s ambition, was transferred sideways (or downwards) from health to the barren political wasteland of higher education and science where, it was hoped, his far-tooprominent profile would be diminished. However, this somewhat contrived department provided Harris with the time and opportunity to traverse the country cutting ribbons and developing the best set of party contacts since that of his new mentor, ‘Big Phil’ Hogan. And we all now know how Harris declined to waste that opportunity. That Simon managed to transform this effective demotion into a springboard to the leadership is now recognised. And McEntee will perhaps realise that the only other alternative is to be demoted to the ranks of junior ministers. But if Harris does put Helen into higher education, the symbolic underlining of their respective fortunes in the leadership stakes will be hard to ignore. Apart from anything else, it will also highlight the failure of one of the most calculated and ambitious campaigns ever to create a party leader and taoiseach.
Harris will understand the optics for McEntee in this situation and know that some in the party will dislike such a move. But given the backlash against the justice minister’s liberal programme and his limited options in Cabinet, Harris could, of course, argue that it has to be education or the high road for Helen.
Meanwhile, Doherty is looking more cheerful by the day as she has been an effective supporter of Harris for some time and is likely to be the sole FG Dublin candidate in the EU elections this summer. But another female FG minister, Josepha Madigan, who presumed (as did many others in the party) that she would easily see off rivals Doherty and senator Barry Ward in the convention for that candidacy, has also crashed and burned. Madigan came not first nor even second in that three-horse race and recently resigned from politics altogether.
