Lenihan in charge of integration policy? Oh dear.

Conor Lenihan is now Junior Minister with Responsibility for Integrating the Immigrant Community. I have a number of problems with this appointment, but if I had to choose I'd cite his "kebabs" remark. In a Dail debate with Joe Higgins (RIP) in 2005, Lenihan appeared to cast this rather puzzling racial slur on the Turkish employees of Gama. Perhaps he was just trying to be funny; this Sunday Times profile, done in the wake of another of his slip-ups, claims that:

"Lenihan fancies himself as a parliamentary performer, and journalists in the Leinster House gallery have noticed that his gags are mostly directed at them. “When he says something he thinks is funny he sometimes tries to catch your eye and look for approval,” one political correspondent said. "

Nonetheless, its hard for this writer to shake the impression that Lenihan is one of the more serially ignorant politicians around, who owes his position more to the family brand than anything else. At the very least another position should have been found for him. Dealing with immigration requires a more subtle touch than Lenihan is possessed of. Or, to put it another way, he's a typical Fianna Fail gombeen. And gaffes aside, he didn't exactly cover himself in glory in his last post, at Foreign Affairs with responsibility for overseas development. On his watch, the government failed to honour its promise to give 0.7% of GNP as foreign aid by 2007. According to Liz O'Donnell, his PD predeccessor, Lenihan didn't even bother to put up a fight.

To be fair, maybe there is method in Bertie's madness. One of the three Departments that deal with immigration (the others being Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs and Education & Science) is Justice, to which big brother Brian has just been appointed. Presumably he'll be keeping a watchful eye on Conor in his new job. We can be grateful for small mercies, anyway.