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You are > Home > Kenny’s team emerges from shorn long grass
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Kenny’s team emerges from shorn long grass
By John Cooney
THE late John ‘Backbencher’ Healy would have cheered on the son of the late Henry Kenny.
“There’s no long grass. It was all cut a couple of weeks ago,” said a beaming Enda when asked if he was concerned that his recently subdued assailants in Fine Gael might be waiting in the long grass to strike after the next adverse opinion poll about his leadership.
Even the Paleites in the national media and his new front bench team laughed spontaneously at Kenny’s rural witticism which he cracked during his Merrion Hotel press conference announcing the ins and outs in his post-countercoup line-up.
Gone from the front-line ranks were over-weaning former frontbenchers Michael Creed, Olivia Mitchell, Brian Hayes, Billy Timmins, Denis Naughten and Olwyn Enright, whose demotions will hardly be noticed by a public which will be gratefully spared of their incessant mediocrity.
The new front bench is "a mixture of experience and youth that is both credible and inclusive" to take Fine Gael into government after the next general election, said Enda, looking and sounding a man who is firmly in charge of his chastened party. He has become un oeuf dur mayonnaise – a hard-boiled Mayoman!
Nor, let it be said, did Enda’s claims appear to be over the top or far-fetched. The new FG praetorian guard looks much stronger than the previous motley crew – and looks like a government in waiting.
Five individuals on the expanded bench of 21 impress immediately on account of their strong personalities and proven records: Michael Noonan in Finance, Sean Barrett in Foreign Affairs, Richard Bruton in Enterprise, Economic Planning and Public Service Reform, Phil Hogan in Environment and Dr James Reilly in Health.
As expected, Reilly replaced Bruton as deputy leader with responsibility to "deal specifically with the coordination of Fine Gael policy with front-benchers with members of the parliamentary party – and to see that these policies are actually implemented and followed through".
There was a buzz around the return of former party leader and government minister, Michael Noonan, as finance spokesman, ending earlier talk that Kenny would find no one of stature to step into Richard Bruton’s old shoes. Indeed, I would predict that ‘Bruiser’ Noonan will be more troublesome for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan than was the bookish Bruton, and that Michael will also compete on the abrasion stakes with Labour’s acerbic Joan Burton.
Richard Bruton appeared to be delighted with being given the portfolio of enterprise, jobs and economic planning, including public service reform. This is broadly similar to the enterprise ministry which he held in the Rainbow Government under his big brother John, and his academic bent has been directed into producing a practical blueprint for public service reform which Kenny intends to upgrade into a full ministry if elected Taoiseach.
Looking strong too is the front bench trio of Alan Shatter, Jimmy Deenihan and the irrepressible Michael Ring in social protection. The promotion of Deirdre Clune, daughter of Cork merchant prince, Peter Barry, in innovation and research helps mitigate against his shortage of front-rank women.
The services of four of the pretenders to the Kenny throne are retained with Simon Coveney in Transport, Charlie Flanagan in Children, Fergus O’Dowd in Education and Skills, and the voluble Leo Varadakar in Communications and Natural Resources. Sligo’s John Perry is assigned responsibility for Small Businesses, while Paul Kehoe, a tower of strength in the Kenny camp during the failed heave, remains as Chief Whip and takes on the additional charge of devising political reform.
Newcomers David Stanton Andrew Doyle and Frank Feighan bring new faces to the FG front bench.
If Enda is gearing up for the last lap of the period before the next general election, he has still to bring the Cowen stewardship to an end and to convince the electorate to give him a mandate in the ballot box. From within the Opposition ranks, the Mayoman will also have to gain the kind of popularity that a succession of opinion polls have been running in favour of Labour leader Eamon Gilmore.
Nor is Gilrmore shy in reminding us of his popularity. Delivering the Jim Kemmy Memorial Address in Kilkenny, he again insisted that a Labourled government was achievable but he said he would take nothing for granted. His mantra is that support for the Labour Party is growing, because a Labour-led Government would mark a real break from the past.
His slogan is "Not just a new Government, but a new approach to Government including how it is conducted". But the canny Gilmore is under no illusions that Labour’s growing strength is universally welcomed. He even warned that Fianna Fáil and their rich friends will engage in scare tactics to dissuade voters about Red Labour along the lines of how recent experience in Australia, where, a proposal to tax the mining industry led to "a very Australian coup", when Kevin Rudd was unseated as prime minister in the wake of a $100m advertising blitz by the mining companies against his Labour government.
"We must therefore steel ourselves to engage in the most challenging political battle in Labour’s long history," Gilmore told the Labour faithful. "To win the election that will shape the future of our country, possibly for the next quarter century. And we must push ahead with our preparations for what we will do in Government."
With the Dáil preparing itself for its long summer holidays, the Taoiseach and other party leaders will be refining their policies on the key issues of jobs, the health services, the education system, the environment and public service reform.
Gilmore is advocating public services that work, that people can have faith in, and that public servants can be motivated by.
"As a country, we have to change the way we do our business – and that includes fixing the failures in corporate governance that has so damaged our country, and our reputation abroad," he told the seminar in homage to the late Limerick socialist, Jim Kemmy, who was by-passed for government service by Dick Spring.
Although the public memory is fading of how Spring lacerated Fianna Fáil in the 1992 general election but then was seduced into Government by Albert Reynolds, a major test of Gilmore is to convince voters that he would not do a similar deal with Brian Cowen. ‘Biffo’ has shown himself to be over-fond of the traditional unaccountable style of governance that has held sway since 1922, and it is hard to see the Offaly man committing himself to changing government itself, as advocated by Labour, through opening up power and putting people at the heart of decision-making.
While constitutional and political reforms are urgently needed, the public’s first priorities are to see an improvement in their current dire economic circumstances in which more than one in every eight people in the labour force are looking for full-time work, combined with a State deficit of around €20 billion and a seemingly open-ended pit of taxpayers’ money being poured into Nama bonds.
"Any one of these problems alone would be extremely challenging," conceded Gilmore.
"Together, they are a colossal burden."
This must amount to the understatement of the year. But we are approaching the traditional silly season when public discourse shifts from the Oireachtas to the summer schools.
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