Sir, – Kathy Sheridan is quite right when she says that no Minister acts as a “sole operator”(“Angry flea circus buzzing around ‘woke’ Helen McEntee goes beyond the usual political sniping”, Opinion & Analysis, November 20th).
In the debate on whether or not the current Minister for Justice has performed well or overly concentrated on so-called “woke” issues, most commentators miss a basic point.
During the two periods of maternity leave, the Government collectively took the view that the many responsibilities of the Department of Justice could be carried out by a Minister on a part-time basis, hardly an endorsement of the importance of the portfolio.
That could have easily been avoided by the reallocation of less onerous ministerial responsibilities within the Cabinet. For instance, higher education could have been subsumed temporarily into its spiritual home in the Department of Education. However, it would appear that coalition politics got in the way and, regardless of the many law and order and other issues facing the country at the time, the priority was to ensure that Fine Gael continued with the justice ministry during that important one-year period. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.