THE HARDEST THING to do as a columnist is admit when you’re wrong. At least I assume it’s hard, it’s actually been years since I’ve been in that position, so I don’t really remember what it feels like.

The second hardest thing is when you’re bang on the money and, out of some extremely false sense of grace, have to somehow contrive to avoid patting yourself on the back. 

Last week, within hours of me filing my column about how Simon Harris’ attitude through this election campaign has been off-puttingly dismissive, the Taoiseach took that approach into the stratosphere in Kanturk when speaking to disability service worker Charlotte Fallon. The moment was captured in a clip that has now been seen millions of times and likely by just about everyone who intends to vote on Friday. Wow, Carl, how do you do it? Don’t thank me, I’m just doing my job. Anyway.

It is a time-honoured tradition that each Taoiseach eventually makes a rod for their own back — there was Brian Cowen’s ‘tired and emotional’ interview on Morning Ireland, there was Bertie Ahern’s bank accounts or lack thereof, and now, Simon Harris has Kanturk. Quite impressive really, given that – as he keeps reminding us – he’s only been in the job seven months.

Though Harris has apologised personally to Fallon, his public pronouncements on the matter have been a little less endearing. Notably, he’s pulled out the whole ‘nobody is more annoyed at me than me’ approach which, if you’ve looked at the kind of things people have said about him online since the clip emerged, seems unlikely. Those people are pretty angry, Simon. But it was to get worse.

First, Harris appeared at a campaign event in Mayo alongside former Taoiseach and Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny, looking for all the world like a parent who’d been called in to the principal’s office to explain his son’s behaviour. It was not a moment of tremendous dignity. Then there was the release of an Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll that showed Fine Gael down a whopping six percentage points.

That body blow was swiftly followed by an exchange on the red carpet of this week’s three-way leaders’ debate, where Harris repeatedly avoided directly answering questions put to him by the Daily Mail’s Brian Mahon about contact made between Fine Gael and RTÉ around the national broadcaster’s publishing of the Kanturk clip.

He has confirmed that representatives of his party spoke to RTÉ, and that they spoke about the clip, but all he can tell us about the interaction is that it was “appropriate”. Given Harris’ own take on the mistake was that ‘if you get something wrong, you own it’, one can understand the public’s perception that this saga has not been fully accounted for.

Despite repeated requests throughout the campaign for Harris to sit down with The Journal‘s Political Editor Christina Finn, and reassurances by team FG that they were sorting it for Wednesday or Thursday, the Taoiseach reneged today. Mary Lou McDonald and Micheál Martin have both answered our questions. One wonders what he’s afraid of, if he possibly believes we had a team of disaffected carers, renters and disability service and healthcare workers laying in wait to ambush him and ask him some polite questions? Don’t laugh, we’ve all got phobias.

Instead, it is understood that the Taoiseach has spent the final day of the campaign blitzing local radio stations where Fine Gael seats are in play and an appearance with Matt Cooper on The Last Word. During Tuesday night’s debate, Mary Lou McDonald accused Simon Harris of believing at the outset of this election he would “jive” his way back into power. While that may or may not be true, he now gives the impression of a man who’s been tasked with dancing the Charleston on top of the Spire.

If there is any cold comfort for Simon Harris at the end of a campaign that has seen his tagline of ‘A New Energy’ replaced by what the pol corrs are calling ‘the Simon slump’, it’s that he’s not the only one who’s having a mare. 

Matt Shanahan, the Waterford TD, ended up in hot water this week when he blasted a campaign light show onto the side of, and you’re really not going to believe this, the Dunmore wing of University Hospital Waterford, which houses a palliative care unit. I know it was only a few paragraphs ago that I made fun of our over-reliance on lampposts as a means of campaigning but surely to God there is some way we can bring ourselves into the 21st century without aiming laser beams at the side of a hospital like some kind of Batman villain.

Despite the criticism that has followed, Shanahan originally doubled down. He issued a statement, which read: “This activity I consider to be fair political commentary. All political parties have repeatedly used the campuses of SETU and UHW for their political presentations.

“The illumination was to the gable end of the hospital wing for approximately 90 minutes and could not disturb or be seen in any way by patients resident.” A fair point Matthew, though perhaps it would be better-received were it emblazoned on the side of an orphanage or a 19th century workhouse. Shanahan has since offered an apology, saying: “I wish to apologise for any upset that I caused by using the gable end of the Dunmore Wing to create raise awareness of my election campaign”.

As easy as it is to make fun of Shanahan’s utterly bizarre decision to campaign on the side of, and I really can’t stress this enough, a palliative care ward, it is more grim than anything. The reality of the situation was brought home poignantly by Soc Dem TD Jennifer Whitmore who noted that her sister died in that very wing two years ago.

It is, perhaps, a fitting end to an election cycle that has foregrounded discussions of empathy or the lack thereof in Ireland’s corridors of power. If we have learned nothing else in the last few weeks it is that a great many people in Ireland feel unheard, let down, ignored and uncared for. 

‘There’s no one more annoyed with me than me,’ that’s what Simon Harris said. Well, we’re about to find out.