Enda Kenny has gone from a five-point plan in 2010 to pointless in 2015
THE nearer the election looms, the more pointless Enda Kenny appears — this time in 2010 he had five points, now there seems little point to him at all.
The fabled five-point plan of Fine Gael was being flung around like some kind of ninja political killer weapon in the lead-up to the February 2011 general election. Trouble is it morphed into a bit of lethal boomerang and has come back to knock lumps out of their credibility this time around.
As even a gang of chimps on unicycles would have found it hard to lose against Fianna Failure at that particularly torrid juncture in our often tragic island story in the weeks after the humiliation of the Troika occupation of the country, Fine Gael really did not need to promise so much, especially as they knew they would deliver so little.
And here we are, nearly five years on, and so many points down. But where are those promises now?
So, let us spin the wheel of (mis)fortune and see where it take us.
Yes, Point Three of Fine Gael’s star of hope — what did you say about that again, Enda?
Oh, that was it, in January 2011, Mr Kenny gave us a glimpse of the amazing healthcare we would all be enjoying in that near future paradise of 2015/2016.
“Point Three — we will create a completely new health system,” Mr Kenny excitedly informed us near the end of the last election campaign, adding, breathlessly: “Thanks to Micheál Martin’s creation of the HSE, €17bn a year is currently spent on a health system that doesn’t work. That’s going to stop.”
And so it did, because — and with absolutely no help from Mr Martin — we now have a health service costing €13.4bn a year that doesn’t work.
But, wait, 2011 Enda had yet more dazzling trailers of the magical golden age of November 2015 to tell us about.
“Our FairCare plan — modelled on the reformed Dutch health service — will cut waiting lists and end apartheid in our health service. With universal insurance, we’ll offer equal access to all. There’ll be more and better community care, meaning fewer hospital stays.”
Wow! That sounds bloody great, Enda! Except, did you not abandon the Dutch model? And then flail around like a gutted fish on a slab rasping for air, telling us you were then following the German model? And then, you didn’t seem to have any idea what this German model actually was — Claudia Schiffer, maybe?
So, poor little Leo Varadkar had to be wheeled out, shrugging his shoulders in that Shaggy “It wasn’t me!” kind of way, and basically saying: “Yeah, all that universal health insurance stuff we’ve been banging on about since, like, 2007? Yeah, well, it’s a load of old crap really. Not gonna happen. No. Blame James Reilly, I guess.”
“But Dutch model? German model? Might as well have been a model railway for all the good of it. But don’t blame me, I just deliver the bad news with a concerned-looking doctor’s face — and a slyly quizzical ‘looks like Enda buggered-it-up again....’” flick of the eyebrows.”
So, OK, Fine Gael are not very good at health — hey, is not as if it’s a life and death issue, or anything — but how did the other points of the pentangle of pure gold pan out?
Introducing better, fairer budgets that don’t penalise the poor and groups like carers?
Oops! The carers, like the elderly, the Travellers, and all the other vulnerable groups who have been financially victimised one way or another, might not concur with that point.
And the financial watchdog this Government loves to ignore is also sounding alarm bells about the prudence of the last budget too.
Better, smaller government? Well, you couldn’t actually get any worse than Calamity Brian Cowen and Co, but smaller?
Maybe if ministers had not tripped over their own arrogance on the Seanad referendum then we could have got that waste of space chamber abolished.
A political system that achieves more and costs less? Maybe not so much.
And finally, creating jobs? Well yes, unemployment has marginally dipped below 10%. But how much of that was due to the cyclical nature of economics, and following Brian Lenihan’s ultra-austerity blueprint so rigidly?
But if not Enda, who?
Gerry “Army Council? What Army Council?” Adams does not seem interested in the Taoiseach’s job unless he can run the Government in the same way Sinn Fein’s (life)president runs his party — with total obedience, and no TD ever, seemingly, espousing independent thought.
So, that brings us back to Mr Martin again. But in the best pantomime tradition, this induces a cry of “Oh no it doesn’t!” from the Corkonian of destiny as he insists he will only deign to take up the mantle of head of Government if he can do so as the majority coalition partner.
As this prospect is about as likely as Fine Gael coming up with a half workable health policy, it does not leave Mr Martin much to go back on — apart from his promise.
With the latest polls making a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil hook-up the only chance of stability in the next Dáil, will Mr Martin really not dramatically, and oh so reluctantly, save the nation in its hour of need and do what’s right for the country by getting into bed — and the ministerial Merc — with the old enemy?
Some in Fianna Fáil mutter about insisting on a rotating Taoiseach if such landmark realignment occurs.
But given that Mr Martin and Enda have both abandoned any pretence at leadership, or principles, on the towering social issue of our age — repealing the Eighth Amendment — it would not so much be a rotating Taoiseach that emerges, more a procrastinating Taoiseach — whichever of the two was in the chair on any particular day.
Mr Kenny has kicked the issue to touch with yet another constitutional convention after insisting it be kept out of the last one, and like a slighted, surly, teenager, Mr Martin just says “We’re not going there”.
Imagine their weekly pre-cabinet meeting as inter-changeable Taoiseach and Tanaiste? “You make a decision! No, you make a decision! No, you make a decision!.....”
The sad fact is that in a matter of weeks you are going to have to make the decision between the two — Mr Pointless, or Mr Spineless?
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
