The Kettle's Boyled: I’d like to give junior ministers a plug

I was away in mid-June and missed an important local event. Normally somebody will text me if a story is breaking locally, but this one passed me by and it was over before I knew it. That was a pity, because I could have jumped on a plane and rushed to Roscommon to get there in time. I am sorry I missed that important ceremony, but I should have been paying attention, checking up on planned engagements by ministers and junior ministers. It was my own fault.

Anyone lucky enough to have been in or around Roscommon Town on June the 15th was surely honoured to have been there, to have been where I would have given my right arm to be. Well, maybe not my right arm, I use that one for shaking hands with dignitaries, but my left one certainly – I have less use for it since I bought the automatic car.

The dignitary in question on that day was Sean Canney, Junior Minister for Transport, and he had graciously come to Roscommon for a brief visit, honouring us with his ministerial presence to officially open a car charging point at Roscommon County Council headquarters. The official event photographs told the story better than I can, but essentially they featured Junior Minister Canney demonstrating how to put a plug into a socket on the side of an electric car. 

Five men in suits stood beside him, one of them helping by holding up the cable, and all of them looking as though they were lining up to have a go at it too. One hopes they all did get to try it once the Minister had showed them how it should be done.

There was another man standing to the right of the picture, leaning against the car and looking happy, so maybe he had already been allowed to stick the plug in the socket and was still basking in the glow of that achievement. There was a noticeable absence of women in the picture, but maybe these are men-only jobs?

This isn’t the first important event in the region that I missed recently, so maybe I need to sharpen up. In mid-February an equally busy Junior Minister Alan Dillon opened a refill station on the Crucspullagadaun Loop walk at Manulla, Castlebar. Designed to save on plastic bottle waste, the water station allows walkers to refill their bottles with clean water as they pass this spot on their morning stroll. It’s what we used to call a tap, in effect.

Of the thirteen people who lined up to help Minister Dillon cut the ribbon in that instance, four were women, so that’s something. But I still can’t get it out of my head that in recent months the public engagements of two junior ministers included sticking a plug in a socket and opening a tap. Have they nothing else to do?