Popularity a problem for Callely

LONG before any problems arose about Ivor Callely’s expenses, he was considered to be the least popular public representative in Leinster House.

I remember some 10 or 20 years ago some TDs in the Dáil bar telling me about a vote they had among themselves to find out who were the most unpopular deputies in the House. They told me that the bold Callely headed the poll with a quota-and-a-half. His surplus was sufficient to bring in the Wicklow TD Dick Roche. The Fine Gael seat was taken by Dublin South TD Alan Shatter, in what they said was a three-seat contest.
A lot of TDs and Senators have come and gone since then. There may be other TDs and Senators in Leinster House today who may have taken the “seats” of Dick Roche and Alan Shatter. I am quite sure that Callely has held onto his; perhaps with two quotas now.
Anyway, one’s popularity or otherwise among colleagues in the Dáil is completely irrelevant. What really counts is how popular one is in one’s own constituency.
And that’s where Callely scored in the old days. His seat in Dublin North Central was always considered fairly secure, even though he had to contend with the mighty Haughey machine, as well as take on Richard Bruton of Fine Gael, along with whatever Labour or Independent candidates might also be standing.
But he lost his seat at the last election and then was forced to stand for the Seanad, in order to get back into Leinster House.
That was where his popularity or otherwise among colleagues became very relevant because it is colleagues who have the vote in Seanad elections. Callely was never going to be elected by his colleagues because of his unpopularity among them.
However, he got in by the back door. In other words, he was put in there by the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who thought that a Seanad profile for Callely might help Fianna Fáil win an extra seat at the next election. There is no hope of that now.
His unpopularity among colleagues is also very relevant in the present controversy about his expenses. Normally, when a TD or Senator gets into trouble, there is a sort of closing of the ranks, especially when it comes to questions about expenses. There is very often a lot of sympathy across party lines for their colleague who is being, what they might think, “crucified” by the press.
There is no such sympathy for Callely. They feel that he has let them all down and his arrogance makes it easy for them to go after him.
It has little to do with the fact that he claimed travel expenses to Leinster House from his holiday home in West Cork or that he made mobile phone claims involving a company that had ceased trading. But it has a lot to do with the fact that his colleagues in Leinster House simply do not like, and never did like, Ivor Callely.
Don’t ask me to explain why they never liked him. I imagine it has a lot to do with his arrogance and his cheek. But he never tried to court popularity, either among his colleagues or with the press, which he hated. He fell out for a while with myself because of something I wrote about him in the Evening Herald more than 20 years ago. I cannot remember now what it was all about.
He was never a member of the ‘club’ in Leinster House. As far as I remember, he always voted along party lines in the Dáil but he was never really considered to be a true Fianna Fáil man.
He was, first and foremost, a mé féiner and everything he did was intended to promote himself.
So what’s unusual about that, you may ask. The Dáil and Seanad are packed with people who look after their own interests first and then, perhaps, a long way behind, come the party and the country. That’s the nature of politics as practised in this country.
Callely was neither the first nor the last politician to look after number one first. Perhaps his downfall was caused by the barefaced manner in which he looked after his own interests and projected his own image. The more successful politicians are well able to hide their own interests.
In some ways, I now have some sympathy for him. He must be a very lonely person, having nobody but his wife and family to care for him. For a man who had very lofty ambitions, it has all come crashing down upon his head.
I know it is easy to say – and it is correct to say – that Callely was the author of his own misfortunes but the fact is that he was merely feathering his own nest, as politicians have been doing down through the years.
We hear of TDs or councillors piling into one car to travel to some official function and each claiming expenses as if they had all travelled in separate vehicles. We hear of politicians claiming expenses for attending events they couldn’t possibly have attended, apart from signing the attendance book. The abuse of political expenses is a culture that was accepted – and even openly boasted about.
Sure, Ivor Callely was scapegoated. But he was singled out mainly because his colleagues didn’t like him.