Saturday, March 22, 2014

Article: I’m not sold on Enda’s leadership abilities

On the night of the last general election, a victorious Enda Kenny went on TV and set out his strategy for governing.

“Paddy likes to know what the story is,” he said. This was the Taoiseach-elect’s home-spun version of openness, transparency and accountability.

His message was clear; no more would Paddy be ruled by a government of dodgy friends and dodgier values; there was a new sheriff in town, trailing a bag of bright, shiny values.

Since then, Kenny has done the job with precious little reference to Paddy’s reputed fondness for knowing the story. He pointedly avoids the media interviews that are routine for most leaders in the western world. He has emulated Bertie Ahern in moulding the ‘doorstep interview’ into an art form. His government operates largely as its predecessor did. Instead of a jaded Fianna Fáil, punch drunk from being too long in power, we got an arrogant coalition, cock-a-hoop on their huge parliamentary majority.

Instead of leading, however, Kenny has performed other duties.

In the first, he offers a sunny disposition to gee up the populace and lift national spirits off the floor. This strategy has worked to a certain extent. His sound-bytes and demeanour are in sharp contrast to the dour countenance habitually worn by his predecessor, Brian Cowen.

At a time when governing has been completely constrained by global corporate finance, and in this country by the Troika, looking the business has been a large part of the job.

Kenny’s other role has been as salesman-in-chief for the country. Again, in this he has been relatively successful. He’s a great man for the bonhomie, cracking a joke with Angela here, breaking bread with a herd of oily shieks there. He has been willing to pay the price of seeming like a craven Paddy extending a paw for a handout. He has endured the pats on the head from European leaders, who know that the Irish people had the banking debts of the EU shoved down their throats.

Over the St Patrick’s Day weekend, in the USA, he was flogging to beat the band.

Addressing the US chamber of commerce, he sounded like the go-to guy from the best small country in the world in which to do business.

“If you got a problem, you have an issue or anxiety or concern or a proposition or a proposal, I want to hear it,” he said. “My number is a public number. You can call me anytime.”

That went down a bomb with the boys and girls of the US chamber of commerce.

Like all good salespeople, he glides over the specifics, and concentrates on the sell, the big picture, the realisation of dreams.

Sums, for example, are not a strong point.

Last week, he told a business gathering in New York: “If you had 30,000 three-bedroom detached houses, you’d sell them all in a week. That’s the pent-up demand that’s there.”

According to the property people, the actual demand for houses in the forthcoming year is 6,500. But who’s counting when you’re selling a dream? So there’s no doubt but that Mr Kenny is the cat’s pyjamas when it comes to smiling and selling.

But what about leadership? How is he on the tough decisions? He demonstrated some steel, last year, by facing down a small band of rebels who refused to vote for the abortion legislation. That was easy enough.

The tragic death of Savita Halappanavar, and pressure from Europe and the Labour Party, meant that legislation was inevitable. After that, it was just a matter of separating the ‘definitely maybes’ from the ‘definitely nots’ and casting the latter out into the wilderness.

Now, however, he is faced with a really tough political decision. Leo Varadkar’s call for garda commissioner Martin Callinan to withdraw his “disgusting” remarks about the two garda whistleblowers has opened a can of worms. Here, at last, is one way in which the current government does differ from its predecessor.

No Fianna Fáil minister in the last government would have broken ranks in this manner. Quite the opposite. The former TD, Jim Glennon, has spoken publicly about how, at the height of Ahern’s tribunal woes, Glennon raised the issue in a parliamentary party meeting, saying that the whole country was talking about it.

Glennon said that his observation was met with silence.

Until last Thursday, most within the Government were similarly willing to lodge their heads in the sand over the now discredited positions of both Commissioner Callinan and Alan Shatter, in relation to the whistlebowers. Both men had been hostile to Sergeant Maurice McCabe and retired garda John Wilson. Both men attempted to blacken the whistleblowers’ characters in Oireachtas hearings; Callinan at the Public Accounts Committee, and Shatter in the Dail, when he said the whistleblowers had failed to co-operate with the garda inquiry into the penalty points affair. Neither the commissioner nor the minister had offered any protection to two gardaí whose actions Varadkar has hailed as “distinguished”.

Now that the truth has been laid bare, Shatter and Callinan are between rock and hard place.

Both could apologise for their respective remarks, admitting that they got it wrong. However, the remarks were only symptomatic of a wider hostility both displayed towards the whistleblowers.

Within ‘the force’, Sergeant McCabe, and former garda Wilson, prior to his retirement, received no protection and were subjected to what they believe was constant harassment.

In the public domain, Shatter has, since late 2012, repeatedly framed statements about the whistleblowers, and their allegations, in tones ranging from scepticism to hostility. Never once did he offer any protection to them.

Are their positions sustainable? Apart from Varadkar, Simon Coveney offered implicit criticism of the treatment of the two whistleblowers, in the Sunday Independent last week. The Labour Party members are quite obviously at one with Varadkar.

Prior to recent months, Shatter was a close confidante of Kenny’s, one of the few party heavyweights in Dublin who stuck by the Taoiseach during the attempted leadership heave in 2010. Shatter has also been a hardworking and progressive minister outside of the travails he has brought on himself through blind loyalty to the judgement of the commissioner.

Telling Shatter to repent or go won’t be easy for Kenny, but that’s the stuff of leadership. Paddy, as the Taoiseach said, likes to know the story. And if things are let stand as they are, Paddy will be kept in the dark, because openness and transparency require men and women of courage to stand up and call out malpractice and wrongs, where they see them.

Will anybody so inclined actually follow through on their instincts, when two of the most powerful office-holders in the country are allowed to attack whistleblowers with impunity? It’s high time for the Taosieach to man up and do what’s right by the country, rather than give regard to narrow political considerations.


The time for smiling and selling is past. Proper leadership requires no less.

By Michael Clifford

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