Fianna Fáil shouldn’t dump Martin just to rewrite history

I DON’T really care whether Micheál Martin or Michael McGrath leads Fianna Fáil — but I do care why.

I don’t think the reported reason for the desire to replace Martin among a group within the party — that "no member of the Government that allowed the troika in here should ever be in government again" — is good enough.

It is not good enough because it is not honest. Eventually that will catch up with Fianna Fáil, and with the rest of us.

Yes, it’s true that Martin was in the cabinet, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, when the troika came in. What did you expect him to do? Lobby the leadership to make a run for it before the axe fell and let Fine Gael and Labour deal with it — as they could easily have done? Refuse the terms of the deal and escape, like the Portuguese Socialists, leaving Fine Gael and Labour to do the deed?

Wrap the Tricolour round himself, barricade the doors of the Merrion Hotel and refuse to let the troika in, even if the country went up in smoke, along with our healthcare, our education system and our hopes and dreams?

Not a good idea?

You know that, of course. Fianna Fáil knows it. Even the "deep throat" who has been whispering to the media knows it. But despite Martin’s success in increasing Fianna Fail’s popularity ratings from around 17% to around 29%, they know that a lie might be an easier sell to the people of Ireland than the truth.

The lie says: "Here is our nice clean new leader who would never, ever have let that nasty troika in. Here is our nice clean new party who would never, ever have allowed the property bubble to blow up. Vote for us."

This would be in the grand tradition of lies which has been the making of Fianna Fáil. Unsurprisingly, the broadminded Brian Lenihan Jnr made exactly that point when he compared calls for unilateral default on the bailout terms to de Valera’s campaign against paying land annuities on loans to the British.

The resulting trade war did massive damage to the Irish economy from which, arguably, we only fully recovered in the noughties. But it was an electoral formula that worked for Fianna Fáil.

Vote for us because we are Irish, not English, but we will run the country exactly as they did. Vote for us because we would never have signed the Treaty, but we will work it. In the last election Fine Gael and Labour played Fianna Fáil’s trick back on them: Vote for us because we didn’t sign the deal with the troika, but we will work it.

And now, unbelievably, Fianna Fáil could be set to play it back on the Government again: Vote for us because although our party signed the deal with the troika, our leader didn’t. But he will honour the deal which succeeds it to the letter.

Could we not just grow up here? It’s true that Micheál Martin was in Cabinet while Charlie McCreevey was inflating the property bubble and Bertie Ahern was cheering him on. He was also in Cabinet while the education spending went from €3bn to €9bn, while life expectancy went from below the EU average to above it, while the number of people at work increased by 350,000 and the percentage of women at work went up by 45%, figures which were much higher but take into account the post-2008 collapse.

I am sick to the back teeth of this vile, snobby, dishonest version of history in which sees the Celtic Tiger as some sort of marauding beast. What is wrong with full employment? About as much as it wrong with self-respect.

The people now bemoaning the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era are people who always had money. They hated those big queues at the checkouts. They hated meeting people from the road on foreign holidays. They wanted the roads freer for their own big cars. It did my heart good to read interviews with Roddy Doyle at the weekend in which he made the point that "those years, for a lot of people, were terrific".

Look, I would have taxed more. I would have taxed differently. I would have built less. I would have pumped money into home insulation and green energy. I did not vote for Fianna Fáil then mostly because they were not doing enough of the above. I will probably never vote for Fianna Fáil. But it won’t be because they have a leader who "let the troika in" or for that matter one who didn’t.

As it happens, I like Micheál Martin. One reason is because he became bad-tempered while he fended off lobbying to bring in the ban on smoking in workplaces, making Ireland the first country in the world to do so. Another reason is that he at least mentions climate change and energy security.

Another reason is that as Minister for Education, he began a transformation in the level of resources for children with special needs. I remember him making the point when an RTÉ reporter was inexpertly trying to knife him for cutting the numbers of Special Needs Assistants, that he had been responsible for beginning the expansion in their numbers by 922% from 2001 to 2009.

OF COURSE the main reasons I like him are completely irrational, usually the reasons people have for liking or disliking people. I was a cub reporter at a dance event in Firkin Crane in the early 1990s and was gobsmacked to behold the cub Martin discussing dance with interest and passion. Then in 2010 I bumped into him in Crumlin Hospital during his young daughter’s ultimately fatal illness and my heart went out to him.

The immediate reason for this reported challenge to his leadership — the fact that he allowed a free vote on the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill instead of ramming it through — would enhance my respect for him. I find it abhorrent that any leader would force deputies to vote against their strongest conscientious objections, particularly as they had promised on the doorsteps not to do so

But some have a different view of what leadership means. And allowing a free vote is a better reason to give for challenging him than that he "let the troika in", like Aoife Mc Murrough let in Strongbow. Stop for a moment to enquire about the fate of some of the Greek ministers who "let the troika in" and you will see where scapegoating gets you.

Replace Martin, by all means. He is an exceptional politician, but then so is Michael McGrath. But don’t replace him so you can tell lies about our recent history, Because if you do, history will repeat itself. We will go on lying to ourselves for ever and ever that there is a politics without compromise, without misfortune, without international co-operation and without leaders who, like Michael Collins, sometimes have to choose the lesser of two evils.