Taoiseach’s week to forget amid career of gaffes

To his supporters, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is an underrated politician who deserves more credit for saving Ireland from financial ruin. For his detractors a series of public gaffes — the latest of which have occurred this week — mean his political limitations are rarely far from view.

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In 2002, weeks after taking over as leader of the then opposition Fine Gael, Enda Kenny was forced to apologise for a highly inappropriate racist joke about Patrice Emery Lumumba, the first independent leader of Congo, allegedly murdered by the CIA in the 1960s.