It is not always easy to figure out where Sinn Féin stands on any climate or environmental policy, but if nothing else, they are masters at recycling their own narratives.

Two weeks ago, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty launched a broadside against the HSE during Leaders’ Questions over a covered bike shelter on the grounds of University Hospital Kerry for staff use. His intervention just days before two key byelections was calibrated to stir up memories of that other notorious Leinster House bike “shed”.

Doherty’s speech will be studied by students of political communications for its clever framing of “wasteful” expenditure on a “designer” bike shed while “mothers” are languishing on trolleys and waiting lists, and carers are grounded due to lack of funding. While the Government is splashing out on “luxury” and “vanity projects”, he argued “vacancies are going unfilled. Staff are working to exhaustion. Patients are waiting for longer and longer. Children are waiting for months for assessment ...” These may all be real problems in the health service, but who needs systemic solutions when you can blame the bike shed instead?

Drawing a straight line from one (outrageously overpriced and underspec) bike shelter at Leinster House costing €336,000 to another (perfectly reasonable facility for commuting staff) at the Kerry hospital costing €127,000, Doherty detected a sinister pattern: he warned of a “culture of arrogance” in which there is a slew of past and........

© The Irish Times