Fianna Fáil moves to quell dissent

FIANNA FÁIL will this week move to quell growing dissent in the party ranks on the smoking ban, with the Taoiseach expected to give a private dressing down to a dissenting minister later this week.

Just days ahead of the party’s Ard Fheis in Killarney, the party was served a reminder of how contentious the issue will become between now and January when a prominent Fianna Fáil health chief abruptly resigned from his post.

As the numbers of junior ministers seeking compromise on Health Minister Micheál Martin’s initiative grew to five this week, Government sources indicated last night that the Taoiseach would speak to Junior Minister Frank Fahey about the matter over the next few days.

Mr Fahey was one of 28 Fianna Fáil TDs who spoke out in favour of some kind of compromise at a parliamentary party meeting last week.

As reported in the Irish Examiner, Mr Fahey, as junior minister in the Department of Enterprise, was effectively co-sponsor with Minister Martin on the initiative.

If a report due from the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) later this month finds that passive smoking poses a carcinogenic threat, it will be his responsibility to implement amendments to the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Regulations to protect the health of workers.

It is understood that some senior Government ministers were unimpressed by Mr Fahey’s intervention. He himself has refused to comment on the matter since the parliamentary party meeting. A Department of Enterprise source said that he would not make any comment on the matter until after the HSA had reported to him. The Government spokeswoman said last night that the Taoiseach does not publicly disclose his conversations with individual ministers.

“The Taoiseach is in constant contact with his ministers and ministers of State. His views and the Government’s views on the smoking ban are very clear and he has restated them again and again,” she said.

The party is expecting some turbulent exchanges on the issue during its Ard Fheis next weekend.

The unpopularity of the ban with some of its grass-roots members was apparent yesterday when a high profile Fianna Fáil councillor, Val Hanley, announced his resigned as Chairman of the Western Health Board.

Mr Hanley, who was Mayor of Galway last year, is also PRO for the Connacht Branch of the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI). He has campaigned vigorously against the ban and yesterday said that it was possible that Galway publicans would follow the lead of their counterparts in Co Kerry by threatening to defy the ban in their pubs once it becomes law in the New Year.

“I will not resign from Fianna Fáil,” Hanley said yesterday. “It is better off to stay within the party and fight it from there.

“I resigned because, as chairman of the health board, I would have been expected to implement some of the provisions. That would have presented a clear conflict of interest for me.

“As a publican, I had to make a decision to fight for my livelihood and for my family. I had no option.”