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Willie O’Dea: Je ne regrette rien
Read more about: Limerick East, Oireachtas, Scandal 
Willie is racing through a statement a few minutes ahead of schedule with a sullen Dermot Ahern sitting beside him. Enda Kenny says he will move a motion of no confidence in him. And now on to Labour’s bill to reform parliamentary inquiries. At least someone is working on improving accountability.
UPDATE: Much like Willie’s accelerated statement, the government wants this thing done as soon as possible. They will have the confidence debate today or tomorrow (edit: supplementary order paper for today). A week’s more media focus on the timeline of Willie’s statements in the Quinlivan affair would not be flattering.
Oh who cares. It’s Willie O’Dea. He is a joke minister in a department no one cares about.
The motion of no confidence should be in Mary Coughlan for going out of her way to block 500 jobs coming to Ireland. Yet again Enda Kenny misses the big issue. You have to dispair
Colm is completely missing the point.
Willie broke the law, lied about it, laughed about it, and is now giving the finger to the entire country.
He might be a joke minister in a joke department but hundreds of thousands of our money keeps him there.
The law of the land is rather important in the scheme of things. Willie has been mooted previously as a possible justice minister.
The law of the land is also the core issue in why Coughlan has not intervened; in that story you see a Minister getting abuse because she won’t break the law, and in the Willie debacle you see him not getting enough abuse for breaking the law.
Our standards are seriously skewed here.
Agreed, Hard to see how defence is a joke dept.
If a man attempts to leverage his office into a statement he knows is not true then and then continues to believe he is fit for office then the joke is on us.
The crux though is if he genuinely made a mistake and did not realise what he was saying despite being a trained barrister then he is incapable of being a minister and should be removed from office.
This is the same story as with Bertie.
If you didnt believe his stories then you would say he should resign;
If you did believe his version of events then you would still demand he go because any man who claimed not to have a bank account while Min. of FInance is clearly an idiot.
Agree that standards are seriously skewed but it is the skew is that this issue is minor in the grand scale of things. Our minister for employment couldn’t give a toss about jobs in SR Technics, Dell, Waterford Crystal etc and thinks people are emigrating because they want to see the world but that’s OK. Our minister for transport couldn’t give a toss that the country ground to a halt with an inch of snow but that’s OK. Our minister for health couldn’t give a toss about the poor and the sick and is closing the public health system in rural ireland to be replaced with a private health system in clinics and private hospitals built by Galway tent developers but that’s ok. Our minister for justice is spending his time trying to ban blasphomy while saying his hands are tied on reports into child abuse by religious orders but thats ok. Our minister for foreign affairs is spending millions building mansions for him to stay in as he jets around the world wining and dining with our ambasadors. Our minister but that’s ok.
Our Minister for Defence slanders a member of Sinn-Fein-IRA and that’s what gets Enda Kenny going with a motion of no confidence? O’Dea shouldn’t be a minister but this is a waste of a motion of no confidence. Do you think the likes of Mattie McGrath and John McGuinness are going to cross the floor on this issue. Like hell. We have to wait 6 months between motions of no confidence and all this is doing it seeing this curse of a government into the summer holidays and then it will be September before we can have another shot at getting the bastards out of office.