World of Politics with Harry McGee

It’s the little things that trip you up, as the late Albert Reynolds put it ruefully after his resignation in 1994. Simon Harris also found this out to his cost last weekend.

Following an impossible schedule of incessant visits, and hand-shaking and travelling, he arrived in the North Cork village of Kanturk on Friday night.

There he met Charlotte Fallon in a supermarket. As he shook her hand, she told him that the disabilities sector was being forgotten. He murmured something and turned away, but she called him back to tell him that she was passionate about her job and felt that her sector – the Section 39 organisations – had been left behind.

Many of these voluntary organisations – there are 1,100 of them – care for people with disabilities and additional needs.

Those who work in them do the exact same work as their equivalents in the public sector – as in, the HSE – but do not get equivalent pay. In fact, there is a huge gap between them.

That was the issue that Charlotte Fallon wanted to bring up. Harris has made a big issue of disability issues since becoming Taoiseach and, indeed, has given Hildegarde Naughton special responsibilities in this area.

The complaint clearly irked him and he treated the woman in a snippy manner, turned and just ignored her.

It was all captured on video and it looked terrible. By Monday morning, the viral video had been viewed 3.5 million times.

Harris and his advisers knew immediately that those moments had really cost him. By the following morning, he had contacted Fallon and had had a really long conversation with her with which he apologised.

He also posted videos on his social media platforms making profuse apologies and saying that what he had said the previous night was not him.

But the damage was done – and it was going to take more than a video and a phone call for Harris to draw a line under it.

The exchange could not have come at a worse moment for the Taoiseach.

Pictured: Judgement day…Upfront presenter Katie Hannon with Micheál Martin, Simon Harris, Roderic O’Gorman and Peadar Tóibín during last week’s Party Leaders’ debate.