The Gorey Details

Wexford is Leinster’s biggest county. It’s a constituency that has existed since the early years of the state. While geographically it remains the same, in terms of its voters it is a very different place to what it was at the start of the century. Voters at the south end of the county gravitate towards Waterford for services. Those in Gorey often travel to Dublin. Travelling time is less and many Dubliners have moved south to find a more affordable home. A walk around Gorey gives you an interesting insight into the local economy. Plenty of take aways, restaurants, bars for socialising. The boutiques, coffee shops and business on the main street.

However Gorey has planning issues. Retail has moved to the fringe of the town centre while housing is a long walk away. For commuters arriving late home from work, there’s the added nuisance of the need to drive to Tesco or Dunnes if the fridge is empty. It’s a town with more traffic than comparable towns in the county.

But when it comes to politics, the D’arcy name is synonymous with the town. The town centre and the agricultural hinterland has been good to Fine Gael.  That was until last November when Malcolm Byrne won the bye election for Fianna Fail. Michael D’arcy faces into this election with the challenge of his near neighbour for the lion’s share of the local vote. North of Gorey there is no large urban area. If both Byrne and D’arcy are to succeed they need to battle for local dominance and move south into James Browne’s bailiwick.

There is no other significant candidate in the local area. The Green Candidate withdrew despite her good showing.  The party has installed a replacement however their website gives no details. Draw your own conclusions as to how the party regard her chances.

Gorey will elect one TD. But could it possibly elect 2? Opinion polls show that Fine Gael may be losing votes, however it is as to, who, where and how much is lost that may decide whether it is D’arcy of Kehoe or both is elected.

Conventional wisdom suggests Fine Gael will win 2 seats. However, consider this. Fine Gael according to one poll is losing votes to Sinn Fein. In 2016, Paul Kehoe just about held on by 50 votes from Sinn Fein’s johnny Mythen.  He is vulnerable to further vote loss and while Fine Gael may be losing votes over all, were he to proportionally lose more than Kehoe, Kehoe could be eliminated but electing D’arcy on his transfers. There’s a school of thought that it may be Kehoe under more pressure than Michael D’arcy. Kehoe also sees Verona Murphy on the prowl in the South West where he usually performs well.  That scenario would see Johnny Mythen take the second seat in Enniscorthy District instead of Paul Kehoe.

Fanciful? Maybe but it is something to bear in mind as the count progresses. Malcolm Byrne would prefer Kehoe to hang in and to see D’arcy under pressure in the hope that a D’arcy elimination will send Gorey transfers his way to elect him.

That’s politics, candidates spend all day wondering how to get elected and the rest of the day trying to see how they can stay elected.

Driving home for Christmas? Beware of Minister Whiplash!

Why is it that of all the sectors in our economy that have representation in government is it that there is a dedicated junior minister for financial services and insurance? The man in the hot seat is one of 2 local junior ministers; Michael D’arcy, the other being Paul Kehoe who is effectively Minister for Defence.

The insurance industry here is a pale shadow of what it once was.  A few years ago I rang around a number of car insurers looking for a quote only to be told that I’d already been given a quote that day by an affiliate and they weren’t going to give me a different price to what I’ d already received. Few insurers will take policies on motor bikes, just a handful cover health insurance in an industry tat is seen by many customers as money for old rope. Insurance is already subject to regulation with both an insurance and financial services ombudsman. So just what does Michael D’arcy bring to the party?

Few areas of economic activity get the full access to a dedicated minister. What makes insurance more important than fisheries?  Fisheries now forms part of the title of Agriculture minister under the marine portfolio and has gone way down the pecking order. At a time when there seems to be a permanent trolley crisis not to mention a shortage of housing, why is there no trouble shooting junior minister sent to expedite the chaos there?

Nothing personal against the minister but it seems that instead of insurance cost being driven down on behalf of the customer, it is the companies who seem to have him singing their song. Minister D’arcy wants a referendum to limit payment of compensation in courts to those found to have suffered whiplash. I’d love to see that wording! The constitution guarantees the independence of the courts. That independence means that a victim must be fully compensated by an insurer or person responsible for injury.

There is a myth pedalled by the insurance industry that every claimant is a chancer, that judges haven’t a clue when it comes to compensation and that this drives costs to insurers sky high. Minister D’arcy wants to cap awards made in court to those who suffer whiplash as a result of car accident. The inference is that whiplash isn’t a real injury.  It’s as if there should be a price list for injuries suffered and to be compensated for.

Let’s be clear about it. Most claims made arising from car accidents are resolved without going to court. The medical evidence is often clear and the cost to the victim is quantifiable. The insurance industry down through the years has got successive governments to remove juries from compensation cases, reduce the number of Senior Counsel in a case among other changes. All were at the time claimed to be the silver bullet to reduce insurance costs. Penalty points, garda road traffic corps also introduced to reduce the number of crashes. This, we were told would lower claims with a knock-on reduction in premiums.

What in fact happened was that we got rationalisation in the insurance industry and less competition meaning that premiums never went own at all!

But guess what?  The penalty points and speed cameras worked. Today we find out that despite the number of cars doubling on the road in the last 20 years, a 40% higher population, cars making more journies than ever, we have the lowest number of road traffic fatalities and less accidents and injuries than when records first started. Yet car insurance is still as high as ever.

I once served on a jury in the High Court. We listened to a case taken by a middle aged motorist who was so badly injured that he had to give up work. It was our job to decide how much he should get as compensation. We sat for a week watching and listening carefully. During the many applications that were made that required us to exit to the jury room, we discussed the matter. Yes the motorist had to be compensated but he had not been wearing a seat belt so had to take responsibility for his injuries. Most of us reckoned he was 50% responsible for his injuries.

Imagine how I was gobsmacked to hear that after a week the case was settled out of court for £100,000 plus costs late one evening? This sum was way beyond anything that the jury had considered and it was done at the behest of the insurance company.

We don’t need a referendum on interfering with court decisions in the interest of insurers. What we need is for Minister D’arcy to direct the insurance industry to reduce premium and to pass on to their policy holders the benefits of safe driving on the roads. Otherwise Minister D’arcy’will be more worried about backlash than whiplash!

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland

If one of the pretenders to 10 Downing St turned up in Wexford, you’d expect that it would be newsworthy, wouldn’t you? You’d think that it would be up there in our media if not page 1 nationally well at least mentioned in dispatches?

In politics, they say timing is everything so perhaps it’s not silly enough for the silly season, but last week we had a visit from Stephen Crabb MP, one time challenger to Theresa May and former UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Last week he traveled to Rosslare Europort to meet with newly appointed Minister for State Michael D’arcy to discuss the future for West Wales and the South East Ireland post Brexit. Mr Crabb is MP for Pembrokeshire which contains Fishguard and Milford Haven, 2 hugely important ports with considerable links to Ireland.  As Britain lurches from shambles to catastrophe over their departure from the EU there is growing concern in West Wales at how trade and jobs will be impacted once Britain leaves in 18 months time.

One might have thought Mr Crabb would have understood better than most the need for timing in politics. You see Mr Crabb is one of the foremost campaigners for Brexit and one might have expected that he would have come here to see the possible impact before he threw his weight behind Farage, Gove and Johnson. Presumably it was his desire to get into No 10 that prioritised his personal ambition over that of his constituents.  Now in the wake of Tory infighting it’s very much a case of every man for himself and he has to be seen as fighting for his local interests.  The reality is that another election in the UK could see the Tories beaten out the door.

And that’s why he set sail from Fishguard last week, following in the grand maritime tradition of Cook, Nelson and Drake. Exploring foreign lands beyond the Tuskar Triangle to see what trinkets he could bring home to astonish the natives. His foreign frolics feature in the Welsh media this week. The concern in Fishguard and Pembroke is that a return of a hard border will see less Irish trucks using the land bridge to Europe given the departure of Britain from the customs union.  The increase in inflation, the strength of the pound and drop in growth forecast for the UK economy into 2018 suggest that personal taxes will increase leaving less to spend. That will mean a reduction in exports to the UK from Ireland but add to that the likely levies applied to Irish goods in Britain and vice versa it makes for grim times ahead both here and across the water.

For all his new found concern in his local economy, Crabb cares little about Wexford and the Irish economy nor for the wider social and economic consequences of Brexit.  Brexit simply sounded good at the time and as a concept explains perfectly how Tory men use narrow nationalism as a vehicle advancement.

During the week I went to see the movie Dunkirk.  Dunkirk was a national humiliation for Britain that fixed Britain’s resolve to undo the disaster of Dunkirk and to ensure the UK could have a role in Europe. In 1940 Britain didn’t know where and didn’t know when but it still knew it had a role to play.

I once had an Uncle, long deceased, who was rescued after 4 days from Dunkirk.  Uncle Monty returned home after World War 2 and stood for the Labour Party in a local election in his home town. Monty eventually became Mayor. As a teenager I remember once being in his home and reading his election literature. What struck me about his leaflet was how he said he’d lived all his life in the town except between 1939 and 1945 when he served his country. He didn’t have to add anything else. That generation understood a sense of wider communal duty to put your community ahead of yourself and serve because someday things can be better. Many in the present generation of UK politicians and indeed in Ireland espouse the exact opposite.

Which brings me back to Mr Crabb. Once firmly en route home to Wales, Minister D’arcy tweeted to him, a tweet which Mr Crabb in turn retweeted.  At some stage Minister D’arcy appears to have had second thoughts about his away day with the Welshman and he deleted his tweet.  

It was that sort of day in Rosslare.