The actual new FG front bench

// July 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // fine gael

As got from p.ie, where there is mucho interesting discussion about it. Looks to me like Finance and the long term economy has been split which I think is a very good thing indeed.

FINE GAEL FRONT BENCH 2010 |

——————+———————-

Enda Kenny |Leader / Northern Ireland
—————————+———————-
Sean Barrett |Foreign Affairs
—————————+———————-
Richard Bruton |Enterprise, Jobs & Economic Planning (including public service reform)
—————————+———————-
Catherine Byrne |Older Citizens
—————————+———————-
Simon Coveney |Transport
—————————+——————————————-
Deirdre Clune |Innovation & Research
—————————+——————————————-
Jimmy Deenihan |Tourism, Culture & Sport
—————————+——————————————-
Andrew Doyle |Agriculture, Fisheries & Food
—————————+——————————————-
Frank Feighan |Community, Equality & Gaeltacht Affairs
—————————+——————————————-
Charlie Flanagan |Children
—————————+——————————————-
Phil Hogan |Environment, Heritage & Local Government
—————————+——————————————-
Paul Kehoe |Chief Whip (with responsibility for political reform)
—————————+——————————————-
Michael Noonan |Finance
—————————+——————————————-
Fergus O’Dowd |Education & Skills
—————————+——————————————-
John Perry |Small Business
—————————+——————————————-
James Reilly |Deputy Leader & Health & Children, (with responsibility for policy coordination &
implementation)
—————————+——————————————-
Michael Ring |Social Protection
—————————+——————————————-
Alan Shatter |Justice & Law Reform
—————————+——————————————-
David Stanton |Defence
—————————+——————————————-
Leo Varadkar |Communications & Natural Resources
—————————+——————————————-
Frances Fitzgerald |Leader in Seanad

I’ll be on Newstalk’s Saturday Edition in the morning

// June 18th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

I will be taking part in a discussion re: the week’s events in Fine Gael tomorrow morning between 8.30am and 9.30am. I’m not a main player as it were, merely a phone contributor.  Senator Alex White, Senator Frances Fitzgerald and Padraig Duffy former press for Bertie are the main attraction but I’m aiming to be one of those memorable character actors who runs off with the show. I mean I presume it’s solely going to be about matters Fine Gael cos if we stray into talking about the Lakers win over the Celtics I’m in trouble.

Where does Fine Gael go now?

// June 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // fine gael

I think this rural vs urban stuff is nonsense, Mark Coughlan of another parish noted that it seemed to be in areas where the PDs had once had a foothold or seat that the FGers were opposed to the confidence motion. I would expend that and incorporating my previously expressed and rather simplistic notion of tribalists versus policisits slightly. I would suggest that TDs and Senators from places where FF are the only enemy (and I would include places where a personal vote has gotten Labour TDs elected), these are for the most part ideological free zones and have been for the last 30 years or more and they tended to back Enda because they saw this as an internal party matter and assault on the chief. But in places where FGers have had to battle Labour, the PDs, SF or the Greens or some other shape of ideologue then they saw this as being about reaching out way beyond traditional FG territory by the force of our ideas and so were backing Bruton. In those places, they are tend to FG more by choice than by birth and what the party actually does is more important than who does it. Those they are places where the PDs gained votes from FG during the 80s and 90s.

That divide still remains, and if those who think it is more important what your family did in 1922 than what you’ve got to offer yourself have the upper hand and use it to secure their position then the party is going to find itself struck around 30% for the foreseeable future with Labour and FF snapping at their heels. But if they realise that what was being said in criticism of the performance at the top table was valid and that we still require a change at the top, even if that change is to be in what the top is doing rather than who it is that is doing it  then we could really make some headway and leap well ahead of both FF and Labour. For me it is noteworthy that no one has addressed my Bloomsday questions  to date, and I think that’s because they are still current and no one particularly wants to give voice to the answers.

Those  questions are.

1. Do they accept there is a problem with the public’s perception of his abilities – not with his actual abilities but with the public’s perception of them? I think most people will answer yes.

2. To those who accept there is a problem with that perception, what do we do about it? There are three options: i) demonstrate immediately a convincing plan to right the public’s misconceptions of Mr Kenny and explain why this has not happened before now, ii) accept stagnation of the party’s support, or iii) remove the perception problem entirely by removing the very man who is the subject of the incorrect perception.

We appear yesterday to have rejected option (iii) and surely we can’t as a party be planning on living with option (ii) so the question remains when will we see movement on option (i)?

What the contest in Fine Gael is about

// June 17th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // fine gael

The contest in FG is not urban or rural as Elaine Byrne suggested but between the politics of “what” and “how” as compared with the politics of “who, and where and when”. There is a not inconsiderable number in Irish politics across the party divide for whom the intoning of the party name is the answer to all questions. This is great stuff at the time of an Ard Fheis when rallying the troops but holds less water when faced with more practical problems as we are now.

Enda has rebuilt an organisation that was eager to listen, desperate for salvation, while the general public were not as eager to listen to him. Those abilities and talents which allowed him to achieve this task of re-equipping Fine Gael and to be the best suited person to undertake this task are not the same as the abilities required to get across and convert people who were not so inclined towards the party or who have never thought of voting for it.

And at the time he started, Enda Kenny and the party recognised this and the counter argument to weakness in his approach was that in Irish politics we do not elect an all powerful president, a singular saviour, but we elect a parliament from which our executive will be drawn and this government will be chosen by the individual who commands a majority in that chamber. The value of the Fine Gael approach over the last 8 years was that it emphasised the team: that Fine Gael had solid competent people in the right place. The party was not selling a mere individual but an entire roster. Enda was to be player manager, picking the team beforehand and urging them on new heights on the pitch. He did not need to be the best player in the most important position.

Thus if the public might not be convinced that Enda Kenny knew all when it came to matters economic he had Richard Bruton by his side to reassure them on that. This approach was a harder sell in 2007 than it is now when the panel the leader had to draw from was more threadbare than any Fine Gael leader had been faced with up to that point. Yet the party almost did it if some of the dice had fallen right. Had highly anticipated gains by the other partners in the new Rainbow come through if Dominic Hannigan prevailed, or Dan Boyle held his seat or the Greens made their much vaunted breakthrough in Galway West how differ it might all have been. That time is passed, that particular race is run.

Fact is that Enda was also selected by the party to out-Bertie Bertie and the time for Bertie has passed. Bertie was the ultimate leader of the easy times, faced with a choice between two hard options he would and could pick both. Glad handling and the large scale superficial campaign of recent elections has been replaced by the more nuanced, even tedious policy discussion required to convey a party’s reading of the intricacy of NAMA, achieving national economic recovery in varied forms, dealing with the impressions of the bond markets as we borrow extensively and more before breakfast.

It is this change in political reality that more than anything else necessitates a change in approach and hence in leader. When Enda Kenny suggested at the recent national conference that despite his hailing of the work of Richard Bruton the day before that having him as Minister for Finance was not a deal breaker in any arrangement with Labour it signalled to many in the party and beyond that the FG approach to the restoration of the economy could be easily sidelined to that of Labour. Labour would hold the key ministry of finance from which all resources flow. If that were the case then the public too felt why vote for the middle man if he was not the one who would set the economic course of the country.

The little defence that this is the wrong time admits that this is the right thing to do but just not now. Now that the knife is unsheathed this defence makes no sense at all.  The big defence advanced to date that we should look at what Enda has done as a sign of what he can and will do does not hold water over distance. Enda rebuilt an organisation but surely it does not rebuilding in the same way all over again? Enda did the hard yards but the coach who gets the players through the winter of running up sand dunes to build up their endurance is not the same one to work on their skills in spring. This is not about the past any more, the public have blamed FF for the mistakes we must now provide solutions.

More than anything I would characterise those who are most supportive of Enda to be moreover those for whom the fact of Fine Gael not being Fianna Fail is a bigger selling point to their core voters that the hard facts and policies of what Fine Gael itself stands for and is currently selling. Those ranged in opposition to Enda now are, in my view, those who are more interested convincing the public of what exactly the goals of Fine Gael are and how precisely it will achieve its aims rather that pointing out that Fine Gael are not Fianna Fail. This is where the divide is between those for whom it is more important what we will choose to do and how we do it than the mere fact that it is a Fine Gael minister who pulls the lever. The decision is more important that the person who makes it. Not that the person is irrelevant but less important. The time to merely aim to be not-FF is long past, the time to be Fine Gael has come.

What chances for a smooth change at the top of FG?

// June 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // fine gael

I suspect that it is obvious at this point that the possibility of a change at the top of FG has increased in the last 48 hours and the likelihood of this change over being a smooth and relatively bloodless one has, despite the appearances in the media, increased too. I believe that Enda Kenny knows that the race as currently constituted is run and a change in approach is needed and that he simply can’t overcome the incorrect perception of him that has fixed itself in the mind of the electorate. I say this as a fan of the man, he would be a superb Taoiseach but too large a portion of the electorate can’t see that. So the question is what do we do about it?

In part this mis-perception is to due to the media back lash after he took over the party as many people in the media were somewhat affronted that this guy from the west about whom they knew little had become leader of the main opposition party. Moreover, some of them were appalled that FG hadn’t disappeared to give them the simplistic left right politics they so desperately ached for. Enda Kenny kept the party from relegation into irrelevancy and obscurity but the work to do so meant that most of his time was spent with the organisation the length and breadth of the country and not in Dublin wining and dining with the media insiders. This crucial 18 months when he saved the party has probably damned him in the eyes of the media.

He was exactly what was needed to save the party, but we should remember that Moses never got to the promised Land. For those who say that we must support Enda in all circumstances come what may, I would ask two simply questions.

a) Do they accept that there is a problem with the public’s perception of his abilities? Not with his actual abilities but with the public’s perception of them. If they don’t then they must be blind or delusional.

And b) for those in full command of their faculties who accept there is a problem with that perception then the next question is what do we do about it? If there is something we can do about the then I wish to Christ we could hear it from them cos keeping it as a secret weapon to be deployed just when we need it most has gone on too long. Alternately, if there is nothing more we can do about that perception then either we accept that the party’s support will stagnant into the future at a time when the electorate is in complete flux or they see that a change is necessary. Those are the three options, demonstrate immediately a convincing plan to right the public’s perception of Enda Kenny (and explain why this has not happened before now), accept stagnation of the party’s support or remove the perception problem by removing the man the incorrect perception is of. I’m open to people telling me of other options, but right now those are the only ones I see.

By moving to lance the boil that is the public’s perception of him Enda Kenny can still take the point position in the debate against Brian Cowen, and he can challenge him to match his actions. Enda can profess that the situation has been changed so much by the banking reports that the people need to believe and be convinced that the next Taoiseach will be in command of the economic issues and not be open to being lead or being hostage as it is now so plain Brian Cowen has been, and that FG needs to be strong and seen to be strong in this area in order to ensure that the siren call from Labour to the electorate that there is some easy and painless way out of our economic situation is resisted.

Labour have done well convincing people that we can avoid public sector spending cuts, that we can somehow find significant extra taxation without it impacting on anyone or slowing down the recovering of the economy. There are areas where tax allowances on pensions say can be reduced but you can only do that the once.

We need to find 3 billion this year and then an extra 3 billion again the next and more again the year after that, not the same savings being done again but additional reductions in spending or increases in taxation. If we can get more people in work, then tax revenues will raise and public spending in the form of social welfare reductions.  But where will the money come from to fund this work? If the state were to provide it, we would be borrowing even more which we simply can’t do. That is to relive the 80s all over again.

The end of Enda

// June 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // enda kenny

He has been an excellent leader of the party and has the qualities to make a great Taoiseach but the electorate have fixed in their minds a view of him that is inaccurate, not based on his performance and even at times simply unfair. Yet it would seem that a large portion of them are not for shifting in this view.

It would appear that the public has decided that Enda is the soccer guy who clears out the dead wood, sets up the youth academy, brings through new young players and buys well even wins a few cups but having done all that just can’t seem to connect with them and the squad he has assembled in order to win the league. It’s frustrating and undeserved for Enda Kenny but I think that if the government wins the confidence motion next Tuesday that we as a party should immediately make a smooth transition to a new leader in the form of Richard Bruton and look over the course of the summer to iron out a deal with the Greens that transitions them out of government ASAP. Offer them 3 Taoiseach’s nominee seats in the next Seanad for 3 of their TDs that lose their seats to let them recover as a party in opposition (we’re going to win the Seanad elections anyway with a minimal amount of cllr discipline) and we could look at implementing some of the outstanding Green policies from the PfG that aren’t that awful. A properly constituted directly elected Mayor for Dublin isn’t a bad idea, nor is reform of the planning system.

What the poll shows is our problem that FG are obviously not getting the party’s message across well enough. I get quite annoyed at some of our spokespeople for the their inability to get across a cohesive and consistent narrative of what a vote for FG would mean and what the change that would result from a FG win would be like.

Enda Kenny’s leadership isn’t separate from that but nor it is the whole story.

The rise in Labour’s support is quite impressive for what it is but also very interesting for what it isn’t. It’s not an endorsement of Labour’s policies because they don’t have any. They have a series of well expressed if ill defined goals but not detailed policies to achieve them.

I think the truly massive implication from this poll and other recent ones is that the electorate are hugely volatile. FF have lost the faith of the public and neither FG nor Labour or SF have 100% convinced them to date otherwise Labour would have been over 30% much earlier. There are a lot of voters who are open to listening to a new message and it would seem they are taste testing at the moment. And we should take our lucky stars that we don’t have a rabid party of the right looking for scapegoats amongst racial minorities or minority sections of society.

What this poll does prove once and for all is the folly of many left leaning people in their desire to get FG off the pitch so that a real left/right contest could emerge. It has always been the fact that FF were on Labour’s territory that prevented that sort of contest coming about.

Should FG change leader? I don’t believe so but the question is now will FG change leader? I think it is more possible than it was 6 months ago. There won’t be any movement (with that I’ve probably just damned Enda’s chances of staying on) on the FG leadership this side of the no confidence motion. After all it is entirely possible for McDaid and McGuinness to go walk about, for Lowry to decline to support Cowen (anyone miss his Oxegen ticket give-away?) and Jackie to fail to make the train up from Kerry. And were that to happen all bets are off. For now though it looks to me like the End has started.

George Lee – our part in his downfall, his part in ours

// February 9th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Uncategorized

I am massively disappointed by this, and there is plenty of blame to go around here and I think people should avoid the chance to gloat and more than Fine Gael have lost out today. I would suggest that George Lee is massively naive to leave like this as he should have known that politics is a long term project. Yet, someone in the party should have noticed long before now that he was feeling ill at ease with his role, if FG were a private company that had hired in someone like him they would have assigned someone to act as his ‘buddy’ to ensure that he made a smooth transition to political life. Yet the fact that George Lee, with all the access that comes with being part of RTÉ, should have been so unaware of how Irish political parties actually work is also astounding. Politics is a lonely, solitary exercise, they might be called political parties but they are anything but parties. They are a collection of individuals for that is how we elect them, individually.

I believe that he genuinely means this is about policy formation when he says it, but he simply appears not to have realised there are no formal structures in politics in Ireland for that occurring. I can understand the feeling of frustration of not having any proper input into what policies the party even considers, not to mind adopts. Irish political parties, by in large, don’t have any internal structures for policy discussion. I was FG constituency policy officer for a number of years as well as a local election candidate, and the position was meaningless with no role in even informing people about policy not to mind having a hand in creating it. Being interested in policy in Ireland marks you as a crank and don’t tell me FF, SF or Labour are any different. Just look at cllr Killian Forde’s departure from SF for the lack of openness about internal policy discussion there.

People forget that unlike football teams we choose to be members of a political party because of a combination of a coinciding of underlying principles, policies and the personnel to carry them through. I think the Labour party is full of decent, sensible, honourable people but I’m not a member because I don’t believe in their approach and political worldview. I’m not married to FG and I’m not going to be a member if the party decides to adopt policies I can’t identify with. I’m not saying that is the case at present but it shows that policies are important. More generally we should have, as a party, spent the last two and half years investigating what it is that underpins our policies. Instead we had an announcement about 4 policy areas in 2007 and then nothing, until last year with the report from Alan Dukes on health policy which is quite good but had no involvement of the members at any stage. So what is the point of being a member? But the other 3 areas…nada.

I had suggested here and on p.ie long before now that FG should have changed the front bench to allow Leo, George and Richard tag team on Mary Coughlan and Lenihan. And it would seem that this was what was in prospect but there was a failure to signal this to George. That is a failure of man management, and were this the UK, someone would be roasting the whips office right now.

I think the party has to have a cold hard look at itself, this is part of the reason that it is so hard for younger people to get involved in party politics in Ireland where there is no formal structures for policy or idea based politics. It’s all about getting X elected instead of getting Y done.

I’m sure that the initial focus in media commentary will be that this raises questions for Enda Kenny as leader, I don’t think this really the key concern as how Enda has lead the party or his own qualities as leader have worked out well. For me it raises questions of how Irish politics is organised more generally and more specifically how FG chooses how it does its business. We need to involve more people and have the structures in place to do so transparent and honestly.

Just to give one example, over the weekend I was making some last notes to a doc I received about providing input into the structure of the upcoming national conference that is to take place on March 19/20th. Every member got one from what I’m aware. These have to be returned by tomorrow Feb 9th. Now given the planning that goes into a conference does anyone really think that these contributions will all be read and processed in time to allow any changes of substance to the conference format? No…neither do I. It’s about appearing to involve people but not really involving them. I had tried prior to the national conference in Wexford to make suggests about how we might modify the conference format, but again they got lost in the system and I never heard anything back. I made, along with another person, a presentation to the national exec about new methods of campaigning in 2005 but it again elicited no decision on any action before it was raised with us again out of the blue a few years later, before foundered again for odd reasons of internal process and control. Frankly speaking, political parties make the public service seem speedy and nimble.

FG isn’t unique, in Irish politics, in having these problems but it is to FG’s own benefit that it would address those problems. That must start right now.

In essence I believe he is doing the wrong thing for what it seems are the right reasons. But it would also seem that by standing for election, he was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. I have to ask what was his plan when he went in? and I mean a detailed plan not merely his general intentions that ‘something must be done’. I am not suggesting the system isn’t broken, merely that you don’t fix it from the outside and of all the people in the Oireachtas he could have taken the initiative himself and reached out to the public over the heads of party structures or lack of them to present new ideas.

Fine Gael and Irish politics have failed George Lee by not being able to integrate him but George Lee has failed Irish politics and himself by resigning in the way he has done and by not taking up the fight in public.

An open letter on Seanad Reform

// October 21st, 2009 // 8 Comments » // enda kenny, fine gael, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

The proposal that Fine Gael policy should be to abolish the Seanad after the next election as announced by the party leader Enda Kenny leaves me in two minds. As a means to put down a marker to the government and the Seanad more generally that reform of politics must happen now or else, it is without equal. This reform can start this side of Christmas by extending the franchise beyond TCD and the NUI by legislation, and with notice of a referendum on wider reform to be put before the people by the time of the next summer recess. The choice is now very stark: reform or die.

I am quite sure that this idea will have widespread popular support amongst the public. Yet the mere popularity of an idea is no reflection on its merit. Though I understand and indeed share in the view that the charade of reform has gone on too long, I also believe that a genuine case can be made for the need for bicameral system given the enormously local focus that the current electoral system forces upon TDs. That is the work that TDs do and must do in order to be elected, and a reduction from 166 to 124 in the number elected in this way will not shift the burden sufficiently to allow major change to occur.

We should be in no doubt; the general public are debating ideas considerably more unthinkable than the mere abolition of the Seanad. If such debate continues to occur in places ignored or unheard by party politics then it will be to the detriment of us all. For the moment I would ask that the policy should be one of reform now or die, rather than die now. For that reason, I would ask that the policy to be adopted be with the proviso that it would be reviewed should substantive political reform be implemented prior to the next general election. We should say that we are planning to act but if the government were to implement, not simply announce or propose or set up a commission or look for another report, but actually implement reforms that will match the parameters of cost reduction, increased powers of scrutiny and compellability for committees as outlined over the last few days then we would be prepared to give it the chance to work. This has the advantage of throwing the focus back onto the lack of action by all the government parties and also sets an immediate clock ticking on the issue with concrete milestones that all the issue to be revisited to our advantage. If there is no move on the university seats by Christmas say then it becomes topical again, if there is no bill and referendum by the summer recess then the same. We can keep the pressure on the government at each step. Let us accept that the Seanad is now drinking in the last chance saloon but we should not be so rude as to eject it before it has finished its drink and had the chance to demonstrate, really demonstrate that it can change.

Yet as someone who stood independently for the Seanad in 2007 in large part on the issue of reform, I am minded that party members of all major Irish political parties have no substantive input into the formulation of party policy. Ard Fheiseanna of all hues have long passed into the realm of mere staged managed speaking and photo opportunities for election candidates. A process colluded in by the media who hype up the merest prospect of any real debate as a sign of in-fighting and division instead of the sign of vibrancy it really is. While a leader should and must have the right to initiate policy ‘on the hoof’ in reaction to events, no events have occurred in the last week requiring such a policy shift.

Now more than ever, we need politics to be a genuine battleground of ideas, new and, if long neglected, old. These ideas must be examined, debated, tested and contested at every step. Political parties exist because they are a means to reflect and express the collective views of their members, from the person at the branch level to the highest of our public representatives. After all, it is those members who have to argue the case for those views to the wider citizenry in the hard slog of canvassing, leafleting, and ultimately by standing as candidates for election. That is why it is necessary for there to exist some real means for their views to be heard in advance of most policy decisions. Party members, even elected representatives, should not be placed in a position of having to ‘like it or lump it’ when it comes to the adoption of policy. At the very least, the views of members should have the chance to be heard on policy.

I will say this, the fact that Fine Gael are the ones who stand to gain most in the next Seanad elections means the party can’t be accused as the government will be of changing the rules because they are going to lose out in the next elections.