AS LEADER OF Fine Gael, Simon Harris has found himself with a dilemma that’s thematically appropriate for the week that’s in it.

After all, how many great horror films are there where scary phone calls serve as an essential plot device? Scream. The Ring. When A Stranger Calls. The remake of When A Stranger Calls. The Black Phone. Phone Booth, kind of (it’s not technically a horror, but I’d certainly be scared to be stuck talking on the phone all day). 

We can now add to that list Fine Gael’s ongoing internecine drama, the centrepiece of which has been a much-discussed phone call made by Tánaiste Simon Harris to Minister for the Arts, Culture, Media, Communications, Sports and Patridges in Pear Trees Patrick O’Donovan. 

Shortly after this call, O’Donovan was admitted to hospital and kept in ICU for a time after falling ill during an EU presidency event in Limerick. Harris has since denied that the phone call was anything out of ordinary, specifically saying that he had not asked O’Donovan to resign his post.

Such a clarification was necessary as O’Donovan’s admission to hospital came days after an article in The Sunday Times which reported that a minister from Fine Gael, speaking on the condition of anonymity, had raised the prospect that O’Donovan could be ousted from his place at cabinet over concerns about his health.

Enter Harris, with an appearance on Newstalk during the week, wherein he simultaneously said that he would not tolerate Fine Gael parliamentarians briefing the press against one another, while also arguing that it would be futile to try to establish which of the seven senior Fine Gael cabinet ministers did exactly that to O’Donovan. 

When pushed on that matter by........

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