IT APPEARS THAT there is something quite miraculous about the prospect of an election. Problems that once seemed intractable can be addressed with a benedictive wave. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, for example, announced this week that by the end of the year the numbers of children waiting four months or longer on corrective surgery for scoliosis will have fallen from 87 to 20, with the remaining children offered surgery abroad.
It’s a problem that has plagued Ireland for years – amplified by recent revelations that €19m specifically committed for scoliosis treatment under this government – but that’s the spirit of a general election. It’s sort of like a “day of my daughter’s wedding” but for infrastructural problems that should and often could have been solved years ago. Politicians find themselves more bullish about popular stances.
Darragh O’Brien is all of sudden standing in the way of proposed M50 toll hikes, for example. And a Luas all the way to Finglas by 2031? 2.6km kilometres in only seven years? Wow.
Now that’s what I call an ambitious election promise. The divine intercession that is the looming election cannot solve anything, though. For example, we still can’t pass the Occupied Territories Bill.
That’s quite something. For six years the government has sought to avoid making a call on the Occupied Territories Bill on the grounds of Attorney General advice. That advice changed this summer in light of the ICJ’s July ruling on Isra.