Fair Start… Negative response!

Well worth checking out this, from last Wednesday in the Dáil during Private Members’ Business [got to Wed 6 Feb 2019 and flick to about 4.55pm] and a Labour Motion on a Fair Start for Every Child. Brendan Howlin put it forward, but did he anticipate the response from others in the chamber on the opposition benches?

Excoriating is the word that comes to mind with the contribution from Dessie Ellis, Gino Kenny, Paul Murphy and Michael Healy-Rae particularly so in forensically pointing out the track record of the coalition government he himself was a member of.

…a row erupted when Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae accused Labour leader Brendan Howlin of lecturing the Government on what to do while being a “bloody hypocrite” and a “blackguard”.Mr Howlin said that in more than 30 years in the House he had never seen such remarks go unchallenged.But acting cathaoirleach Catherine Connolly said the former tánaiste had “repeatedly interrupted” and things were said “in the rough and tumble” of the Dáil.

Howlin and the denuded numbers on the Labour side looked uncomfortable in the extreme, but you’d think at this point he’d have crafted some response to the entirely legitimate criticisms. Perhaps, though, there is none. Speaking to some in the LP I’ve the sense they think the worst of the negative public responses to that government is over. I wonder.