So the government has made it through to the recess. As I’m writing this a large party hat is been worn by me. I have embraced new politics and know that we’re all one big happy family pulling in the same direction.
Readers of Undaunted will have noticed that I have failed to mark the rising of Fab Finnie (AKA Finian McGrath) to the lofty heights of a super junior minister who can sit at cabinet and look after disabled people. What a cool guy.
Fab Finnie first crossed my radar the last time there was a super junior minister sitting at cabinet looking after disabled people. It was 2002 and Mary Wallace was enjoying her 15-minutes of political fame. She was a superhero up until she brought out the 2002 Disability Bill. Like all skillful politicians, she published the bill Christmas week. By the end of January the holes in the bill were exposed and an angry mob turned up at the Mansion House calling for the bill to be scrapped. An election was in the air so the wild idea of having anti-bill candidates swept through the hall.
Enter, Fab Finnie.
Give him his due. He won. We got a 2003 Disability Act. Fab Finnie voted for it. Mary Wallace became the victim of the Bertie ire and was never seen again.
The bill was pretty much the same as the 2002 act but hey, let’s put that down to history. Fab Finnie was in the game.
Celebrity awaited him... Literally. It was boom time. We craved celebrity game shows. RTE, in pursuit of high class public service broadcasting, gave us Celebrity You’re a Star, which was a kind of embryonic X Factor. And there he was - Fab Finnie crooning away hoping to raise money for handicapped children.
It was at that point that I - to save my mental health - decided to ignore most of what Fab Finnie said. The fact that a legislator had no idea why feeding the image of charity as a response to disability was - and is - wrong boggled my mind. Still, he was only one TD so I thought he couldn’t do too much harm. I just decided to ignore him.
This strategy worked for around 13 years. Right up until the last election. Fab Finnie now found himself in a gang. The Independent alliance strode the political stage. They even had their own manifesto. Fab Finnie got to write its disability section, which I analysed last January.
Fast forward to the day we finally got a government and there was Fab Finne bounding down the stairs with a ministerial portfolio. How did I feel?
The first thing I wanted to find out was where our superhero was going to be housed? As disability policy covers a number of Departments, Fab Finnie had a choice on his hands. Where did he end up? Health.
To be fair, it could be argued that he was placed there by the Taoiseach but either way, this seems a slap in the face for generations of disability activists who worked to break the link between sickness and disability. They thought they had triumphed but on the face of it, this seems a retrograde step.
Fab Finnie is good at keeping his profile high. He tried to be champion of down trodden smokers. Most of those who interviewed him don’t have the time to interrogate his use of language. However, in most of his outings, I have been less than impressed by what he has said. He loves the language of vulnerability. He likes the idea of disabled people receiving services. He talks to service providers or parents but I’m unsure if he has spoken to organised groups OF disabled people. I want to hear the language of citizenship rather than the language of passivity.
Of course, in an ideal world the minister would be challenged. Undaunted has bombarded the minister’s office with numerous interview requests. I even approached him once when he visited Newstalk's HQ. After thinking I wanted a selfie, he realised i was writing a message as a JOURNALIST and said of course we would sit down before the recess.
The recess starts today. Silly season is upon us. My mind is beginning to drift to simpler things. Holidays are on the horizon. Fab Finnie will drop down my to-do list but he won’t drop off my list. Come September, I’ll be back on the case. This column might scare the living daylights out of him so he’ll either run a mile or grovel at me feet...
Enjoy the summer, minister!
