THIS WEEK, IRELAND endured its most consequential ‘motion of no confidence’ since the last time I was on a dancefloor.

Under pressure over its handling of what were popularly known as the ‘fuel protests’, the government preempted Sinn Féin’s motion — supported by virtually all opposition politicians — by putting forth a ‘confidence’ motion of their own, which passed 92-78. They did, however, lose a minister in the process.

The government appeared to be caught off guard by Michael Healy-Rae’s announcement that not only was he taking his ball and going home, but that he’d be taking his brother with him. Healy-Rae resigned his post, citing ‘people begging on the side of the road’ and ‘grown men crying’ in the context of the fuel protests (protests which were joined in-person and supported online by many individuals espousing anti-immigration and anti-LGBT views). 

The departure of the Healies-Rae exposed at once both the precarious position of the government, while also highlighting a contradiction in Healy-Rae’s own account. After all, there are people literally begging across Ireland, to say nothing of, for example, a massive homelessness and housing crisis. There have been people suffering just as much as, if not more than, the agricultural contractors, hauliers, farmers and individuals of chequered past who set up shop on O’Connell St and elsewhere last week.

These people don’t affect Healy-Rae’s electoral bottom-line, though, and so he is perfectly happy to abandon playing at the national level and return to his more regional and sectoral-specific approach to public service. 

The next day, Martin was forced to take time from his busy schedule to address the concerns of Fianna Fáil’s three youngest TDs, who had collaborated on a letter — presumably at the behest of whichever boy is oldest, strongest, fastest or, perhaps, has the best Pokémon cards — in which they condemned a culture wherein ‘senior colleagues expect us to just explain their government difficulties to our communities’.

One might wonder what they expected when they joined Fianna Fáil and became elected Fianna Fáil TDs. Don’t get me wrong, most of us couldn’t stand over the present-day decisions or recent history of Fianna Fáil either. That’s why the rest of us chose not to become Fianna Fáil TDs. It’s actually tremendously easy not to be a Fianna Fáil TD. Not as easy as it used to be to not be a Fianna Fáil TD, like in 2011 or whatever, but one imagines it might become easier again come 2029. Following discussions with their leader, however, all three of the young Fianna Fáilers have chosen to remain Fianna Fáilers. Yet another decision to explain to their communities, one supposes.

Crisis averted, then! What a relief We can all go back to our lives now, safe in the knowledge that everyone in Fianna Fáil is content. 

Micheál Martin told Irish reporters while in Germany this week that he didn’t believe his leadership was under threat in ‘any shape or form’, presumably stopping himself right before adding: ‘Please don’t embarrass me in front of the chancellor’.

What is likely reducing the heat beneath the Taoiseach at the moment is that Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan appeared similarly flummoxed by the scale of last week’s protests, and did not look assured when he told the country he was thinking about sending in the army without having discussed the matter with the minister with responsibility for the army.   

The Taoiseach went on to speak in his own defence, arguing that nobody could have predicted the protests of last week. This is a claim worth examining.

Nearly an entire week before the protests kicked off, former Ceann Comhairle and current Fianna Fáil TD Seán Ó Fearghaíl wrote to Martin (and Tánaiste Simon Harris) to express in very stark terms his concern over the attitudes of the agricultural sector towards government. He wrote: ‘The antipathy amongst farmers directed towards Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is unlike anything I have ever witnessed in the past, and if not addressed immediately, will do lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to previously good relations.’ So it seems like he had an idea that things might be about to go pretty badly awry.

The truth is, far from being unpredictable, the government is perhaps the only collection of people in Ireland who saw last week’s protests and thought, ‘Jesus, where did all that come from! Did you know people were upset?’

Only in Micheál Martin’s mind is this unashamed unpreparedness an excuse, rather than its own failing. Not only a failing, but perhaps the failing that precipitates all others, and creates the conditions by which a relatively small group of protestors can massively curtail the country’s energy system, affect air travel and hospital appointments, force changes in the time and date of state exams, and result in the massive mobilisation of Gardaí.

Then again, the blame can’t be laid entirely at the feet of Fianna Fáil. For starters, Fine Gael also exists. Second of all, this sort of friction is perhaps inevitable against a political backdrop wherein dissatisfaction seems permanent while the electorate remains incapable of returning a result that facilitates anything other than either a Fianna Fáil-government, a Fine Gael-led government, or, as tends to be the case these days, both. 

It is at this tense crossroads that Jim Gavin chose to reappear this week, publicly describing his experience of running for president as Fianna Fáil’s man as ‘bitter and intense’.  Gavin’s reemergence into the public eye can be quite simply explained: the GAA championships have kicked off in earnest, and Gavin, a legend of the sport, is doing some punditry for Off The Ball. Viewed through a more fateful lens, however, his return is a timely reminder that Fianna Fáil have really only just gotten over the last thing their leader made a balls of.

After Gavin, Martin’s own pick for presidency, dropped out of the race, this column noted: ‘While we’re all glad that the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party has had their opportunity for group therapy and collective catharsis, it’s hard not to feel like the entire 100-or-so-year history of the state has been therapy or catharsis for Fianna Fáil in some way or another.’ And sure enough, the aftermath of the fuel protests has turned into the same damn thing. 

Rather than a meaningful conversation about how such a small group of people can pretty much buckle the country at a whim, or the conditions that have given rise to such a state of affairs, we’re instead left to wonder whether Fianna Fáil will ever be able to go back to being friends with each other. 

We appear to have skipped right over the part where we ask ourselves whether glaring failures in many of our most important sectors have left us very vulnerable to geopolitical and economic tumult, just like in 2008, and straight to the part where we’re making sure that at least Fianna Fáil can carry on as normal, in spite of everything. 

Should the global energy crisis continue (and there is little suggestion that Donald Trump has any either the will or the wherewithal to end it), Ireland will undoubtedly face further chaos, and an uncertain political landscape. What will the Taoiseach tell us then? That nobody saw it coming the second time, either? Just as nobody saw the financial crash coming? 

Micheál Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil, and therefore the country, remains untouched for now. He can count himself fortunate that neither his party, nor the country at large, feels as though they have anyone or anything else to rally behind.