Tip O'Neill once said that "all politics is local" and he knew a thing or two about politics it must be said. Another wily old political dog, the British Conservative Rab Butler described politics as "the art of the possible," another catchy truism.

While Butler and O'Neill were operating at the highest echelons in world politics their observations are no less true of politics at any level.

What for instance does a government Minister do when faced with a wall of opposition in his own back yard to the policies of his own government? It's a conundrum which can only be negotiated with skill and guile.

Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin this week finds himself in that very position, faced as he is with near total local opposition to his own government's stated aim of co-locating a new private hospital on the grounds of Cork University Hospital (CUH).

Councillors, TDs and senators of all parties have come out firmly against the plan which they say will see Bishopstown and Wilton grind to a halt under the pressure of traffic chaos. Local pressure groups, residents associations and individuals are joining the deafening chorus of "not in our back yard".

The problem for Martin of course, is that it's his back yard too. He now has to play a difficult balancing act, to show that he is on the side of the people to whom he owes his esteemed position but on the other hand not to give the figurative finger to his cabinet colleagues with whom agreed the very policy that is now causing him a headache.

What the Minister has said is that the proposed plan for CUH is "unsustainable". He has argued that it is a planning issue relating to that particular site that he has spoken out on and not the general idea of co-location itself.

This of course is not new. Only last year in Limerick, Minister Willie O'Dea played the same game over the loss of Heathrow services from Shannon Airport. Minister O'Dea vocally opposed the withdrawal whilst quietly side-stepping the fact that it was his own government's policies, which he had supported, that pre-empted the withdrawal in the first place.

Now Minster Martin finds himself in the same position. He knows that in the end his position depends on the support of the local, but he also knows what is possible and for him that means sitting firmly on the fence.

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