Party performance
IN February 2008, as the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern became ever more entangled in the Mahon Tribunal, Brian Cowen rode to his defence. As Enda Kenny pushed the issue, Mr Cowen rounded on him: “I don’t need lectures from you on my standards.”
Mr Cowen gets touchy when anybody questions his own or his party’s integrity, and seems to believe the public should forget the sins of the past when assessing the party.
Mr Cowen learned that Mr O’Dea had sworn a false affidavit after the then Defence Minister settled the associated legal case in December.
Yet Mr Cowen apparently saw no issue, and was content to allow Mr O’Dea continue in office.
When Fine Gael raised the matter in recent weeks, Mr Cowen saw it as nothing more than a partisan attack, and responded in kind.
He and Fianna Fáil backed Mr O’Dea to the hilt in Wednesday’s motion of confidence, and ensured the Greens did likewise. By doing so, Mr Cowen placed his coalition partners in an invidious position.
Of course, when the political pressure grew too heavy for O’Dea to survive, Mr Cowen allowed him to be jettisoned.
And his Fianna Fáil ministers did their best to clear up the mess yesterday by admitting that Mr O’Dea had done wrong and was correct to resign.
They should have made that admission 48 hours earlier, instead of attempting to defend the indefensible. By doing the latter, Mr Cowen gave Fianna Fáil’s critics the ammunition they required to say the party has never changed – and never will.
ON Tuesday evening, just after Mr O’Dea had made a statement to the Dáil defending his conduct, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny signalled his party would be tabling a motion of no confidence in the minister.
Mr Kenny’s move sparked the crisis for the Government. Up to that point, the O’Dea issue had merely been rumbling in the underground – a potential danger, but one which had not fully materialised.
Not alone that, but Mr Kenny and the party sustained the pressure. When the Government passed its own motion of confidence in Mr O’Dea on Wednesday evening, Green senator, Dan Boyle, signalled his unhappiness. FG pounced, announcing on Thursday morning it would table another motion of no confidence, but this time in the Seanad, which would isolate Mr Boyle and caused a massive headache for the Greens.
It was smart politics, and Mr Kenny sustained the pressure in the Dáil, roaring across the floor the Government was “harbouring a perjurer”. It was ferociously strong stuff, and in the end, achieved its purpose in the shape of a ministerial scalp.
Yet it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that FG was being opportunistic on this one. If the party had genuine concerns about Mr O’Dea being unfit for office, it could have raised the matter in December immediately after the minister admitted to swearing a false affidavit.
Instead, it waited until this month to do. And it took very cautious steps, allowing Senator Eugene Regan to do the early running in the Seanad. FG realised it had potential, raised the matter in the Dáil, and eventually, all hell broke loose.
Is it a coincidence the party went for Mr O’Dea’s throat the week after they endured public humiliation by losing George Lee? Is it a coincidence Enda Kenny got tough a week after his frontbenchers told him to up his game or face the consequences? And why couldn’t Mr Kenny find this kind of mettle when questions about fitness for office hung over Bertie Ahern prior to the 2007 general election?
It’s hard not to conclude it was Fine Gael’s own demons, as much as anything Mr O’Dea did, that spurred on Mr Kenny and co.
ON the face of it, the O’Dea affair looks like a sorry mess for the Greens. But not all is lost. It’s probably more accurate to say that while publicly they have taken another hit, privately the power-balance within the coalition may have shifted ever so slightly in their favour.
What the public saw this week was a party initially out-manoeuvred and outsmarted by their coalition partners. The Greens were woefully unprepared for Fianna Fáil’s decision to push ahead with the motion of confidence in Mr O’Dea. As a result, they had no other option to vote with FF, no matter how uneasy they were about it.
That could have been that – with O’Dea surviving and more jibes about the Greens being an extension of FF – if it hadn’t been for Green chairman Dan Boyle and his Twitter account. Mr Boyle posted a comment on Wednesday night stating the Greens had been “bounced” into supporting the motion. Furthermore, Mr Boyle said he had no confidence in O’Dea and that the minister should resign.
Mr Boyle proved the loose thread that led to the Greens’ stance on the issue unravelling.
As a result, party leader John Gormley went to Brian Cowen and told him Mr O’Dea’s position was no longer tenable. Mr O’Dea promptly resigned.
And although Fianna Fáil insist it was a voluntary decision on Mr O’Dea’s part, and the Greens insist that they issued no “ultimatums”, that smokescreen will fool no one.
The fact that FF allowed Mr O’Dea to fall on his sword will surely now illustrate to the Greens just how much power they potentially have in the coalition.
It might just result in the Greens demanding – and getting – more of their policies implemented.
EAMON GILMORE famously beat Enda Kenny to the chase when it came to scalping John O’Donoghue over his lavish expenses last year. It was Mr Gilmore who bluntly told Mr O’Donoghue to his face in the Dáil that he would have to go. Within no time, Mr O’Donoghue vacated the Ceann Comhairle’s chair, and Mr Gilmore was again spoken of as the real leader of the opposition.
This time around, though, Fine Gael did most of the heavy lifting in bringing the O’Dea issue to the fore and slowly but surely upping the pressure. But Mr Gilmore and his colleagues did their bit once the smell of blood was in the water.
It was Mr Gilmore who first directly accused Mr O’Dea of perjury on Wednesday. He also managed to implicate the Taoiseach.
“I am amazed that the Taoiseach should seek to retain in Cabinet a man who willfully committed perjury,” Mr Gilmore stated, before stressing: “If this happened in the neighbouring jurisdiction, a minister would not last until the end of the day.”
Labour also went after the Greens, believing that the O’Dea issue would fester and force them to act. That calculation proved a broadly accurate one, although the pace at which events unfolded caught everyone by surprise.
As usual, Mr Gilmore’s performance in the Dáil was razor-sharp. But this episode will go down as a victory for Fine Gael more so than Labour. That in itself might not be such a bad thing, because taking down a second politician in quick succession might have led to, suggestions of being too ruthless and power-hungry.
DID Sinn Féin miss a trick in the past few months? After all, it was one of its councillors, Maurice Quinlivan, who was central to the controversy. It was Mr Quinlivan who launched legal action last year after Mr O’Dea defamed him. That legal action was settled in December, when Mr O’Dea apologised and paid damages to Mr Quinlivan. Mr O’Dea insisted it was all just an honest mistake, but SF still had a wonderful opportunity to inflict damage on a detested political rival. Yet nothing happened.
In the immediate aftermath of the settlement, the party at national level simply issued a statement summarising the outcome of the court case. Headlined “Willie O’Dea apologises in court, withdraws misleading affidavit and pays damages to Sinn Féin Councillor”, it made no suggestion Mr O’Dea was unfit for office, they simply left it to others to draw their own conclusions.
The next statement from SF came last Tuesday morning. This time, the headline could not have been starker: “Minister Willie O’Dea has abused democracy and the courts and should resign.” But by then, it seemed clear the only reason SF was making such demands was because Fine Gael had beaten the party to it.
Why on earth didn’t SF push the issue more aggressively sooner?
Yet again, it will raise questions about party strategy – and whether SF is capable of making any further inroads in the south.
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