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Government descends into parody by holding newsless news conference
By Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent
You’ve got to hand it to the Coalition — they really excel at putting the mess into message.
Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore summoned the press corps to Government Buildings to make a major announcement — that there would be a major announcement on Friday.This immediately triggered a sort of existential crisis among journalists as we all wondered: “Why am I here?”
But it soon became clear we had been lured there under false pretences so that Enda and Eamon could look like great buddies on the TV news after all that unpleasant-ness with little Leo Varadkar and his wheeze to make Croke Park Choke Park and strangle it to death.
Shame the hundreds of thousands of families trapped in mortgage misery were not going to get any comfort out of the press gig we were told would address their woes.
But then those poor fools who voted for change have been kept hanging on for 15 months for any sort of lifeline, so what would three more days matter?
Best to pretend to be interested in their struggles, but really use it as cynical shroud to cover over the cracks in the Coalition. Anyway, Enda and Co had to trot off to the banks first to get their orders on how the cowboys who got us into the mess wanted things to pan out.
No details for mortgage-misery families at the press conference, but the fat cat bankers were going to get the skinny on the insolvency bill from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste behind closed doors a couple of hours later, so that’s all right then — especially as the financial institutions we were sold into perpetual austerity to save will keep the whip hand as always.
But at least Enda was hanging tough in Cabinet, laying down the law and insisting ministers had to stop running off and telling journalists everything.
We know this because as soon as the meeting was over, ministers started to run off to tell journalists everything.
But back at the news conference with no news, at the announcement that there was nothing to announce until Friday, things were descending ito open parody as Gilmore was asked against a rising background of laughter: “So is it Labour’s way or Leo’s way?”
But really it was just no way to conduct a communications campaign intended to ensure anything other than contempt from the public.
After three senior ministers had seemed to be acting in a concerted fashion by insisting there could be no guarantee the commitments not to cut welfare or raise income tax could be kept, the Taoiseach flatly contradicted them, while the Tánaiste had a very public squabble with the transport minister over Croke Park — and, in an extraordinary reversal of roles which showed why Gilmore and his buddies have crashed to 10% in the polls — a Labour minister, Brendan Howlin, wrote to a Fine Gael health minister effectively demanding massive cuts to hospitals.
After that, Enda and Eamon’s empty photo-op pretence at social concern just capped three days of fiasco for the chaotic Coalition.