"Are you drinking Knock water?": Farming columnist Cormac MacConnell's open letter to Taoiseach Enda Kenny
You are not receiving too many in recent tough months.
Furthermore this format is probably more acceptable than the kind of note slipped recently across the benches of the House to you by Michael Lowry.
I am not looking for any favour at all, nor am I mentioning good looking women in any shape or form.
And that is the pure truth.
It is also the pure truth that I recall covering the by-election which sent you into the Dáil in 1975 following the regretted death of your popular father Henry.
One of the main photos in the campaign literature issued by your team back then showed a shy young country schoolteacher wearing waders that almost reached up to his oxters, because he was a fisherman and fowler, and with the kind of open, decent, innocent Mayo visage which indicated that here was a lad that did not smoke, drink, or dally with bad women and whose backside would sit comfortably in the backbenches where the party’s political cannon fodder reside.
I reckoned that you would occupy that backbench for as long as you wished, that you would be a virtually invisible eddy in the political mainstream of that era, that you would do no harm to democracy and very little good and that many folk outside Mayo would soon forget you existed. Latest scion of a dynasty kind of thing.
Taoiseach forgive me, I was so totally wrong.
I have never voted Fine Gael, except by accident in the last decade, but I am now warmly commending you for the composed and impressive fashion in which you have led us both at home and abroad since taking office.
You now fit into the hot shoes of Taoiseach far more comfortably and impressively than you ever occupied those monstrous waders.
Under extreme pressure from all sides and on about all fronts you have been doing a mighty job on our behalf and here is one non-party citizen that wishes to publicly congratulate and commend you for your efforts.
It has not been easy to do what you have done in a period when many of us have become cynical and suspicious of the workings of the entire body politic.
It will not become any easier in the immediate future either with the hot water pot still boiling for example and another election looming and Labour pains intensifying by the week but, in fairness, you have shown you can handle your pressures with both grace and style when necessary.
On another level entirely I would like to know what vitamins you are taking to keep you looking as young today as back in 1975. Maybe you are imbibing a lot of Knock water? Whatever the regime is keep it up.
Also can I be helpful and supportive in reminding you of those lines from Shakespeare which you taught at school long ago.
Was it Caesar who said:
“Let me have men around
me who are fat,
sleek headed men and
such as sleep at night.
Yon Cassius has a lean
and hungry look.
He thinks too much.
Such men are dangerous.”
More than one of your ministers today have that look about them. Beware of friends more than enemies.
Finally Taoiseach, one of the elements which assisted your late father into the Dáil was the fact that he won an All Ireland football medal with Mayo back in 1936.
There has been a long barren spell since then and you have seen Mayo hammered in a rake of All Irelands they could and should have won.
I regret to say that you must prepare yourself for the reality they will fail again this year. Sorry about that.
Le meas mór,
Cormac MacConnell.
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