Every Taoiseach needs a good catchphrase

• Published date: 01 December 2022

Who can forget Enda's famously fintistic Ireland is "the best small country in the world in which to do business" slogan

Oh.

The jury is still out on Leo. "Dear Kylie, am a huge fan" just isn't a signature saying.

The Taoiseach has been working really, really hard to establish one: "Housing is the single most important social issue facing Ireland today" while simultaneously trying to retain possession of it in the teeth of strong Opposition pressure.

In an unusual turn of events, a feature of Dáil exchanges in recent weeks has been a sharp escalation in the battle to claim bragging rights for being the first political party to twig that the country's housing infrastructure is an absolute shambles.

For months, Micheál's stock response to Opposition leaders lambasting him about the situation has been to repeat the "housing is the single most important ..." mantra as proof of his own and his Government's bona fides in dealing with this difficult matter. Yet they persist in accusing him - and the Minister for Housing - of not fully recognising the crisis.

Then a few weeks ago, when Darragh O'Brien was asked by Virgin Media's Claire Brock if there is a "housing emergency", the Minister barged in with his hobnail boots and replied: "No, I don't." He hastily added that an accommodation crisis exists and is indeed an emergency for "many people" but the damage was done.

Mary Lou McDonald couldn't have arrived in the Dáil any faster had she been shot from a cannon.

"Taoiseach, can I put it to you, do you accept this is a catastrophe?" thundered the Sinn Féin leader at the time. "Do you accept that we are living through a housing emergency? If, like your Minister, you do not, that goes a very long way to explain your abject failure in meeting the housing needs of people."

You can see Micheál's irritation every time he is asked this sort of question and is forced to roll out his HITSMISIFIT line again.

Labour's Ivana Bacik has also been tormenting him over who cares most in this calamity. The day after Mary Lou's remarks she informed him the housing crisis is really an emergency "despite the Government's failure and refusal to call it such".

But no matter how many times he insists his administration is acutely aware that housing is the single most important social issue facing Ireland today, they don't listen.

At one point the Taoiseach told Mary Lou: "You're not the first to come up with the term 'emergency'."

Political point scoring

In terms of political point...