Government’s top table gets seal of approval for new era

IT was all smiles and handshakes last night as the blooming new coalition had their first “love in” at Áras an Uachtaráin.

Not a foot wrong, not an awkward moment.

Even any old tribal wounds between Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his new minister Richard Bruton seemed healed, as the latter got the longest and most pronounced congratulations from his party leader. Cordial it was.

Arriving just after 9pm with his beaming team of freshly appointed ministers, Enda Kenny looked at home after his second trip on the same day to the Park.

Dressed in a fuchsia pink two piece suit, President Mary McAleese, signed the appointments for the members of government.

Standing to attention in two lines in the State reception room, each new minister took their turn receiving their seals of office from the President.

There were no signs of a rift either, after earlier rumours of internal bickering in Labour over the appointment of ministers.

Enda Kenny, the longest serving TD in the Dáil, congratulated each of his new cabinet members, before a sit-down photograph for all concluded the formalities.

After the excitement and cheers earlier at Leinster House, it was time to get down to business. Moving into a private room Mr Kenny sat his newly-appointed Cabinet at a table for their first formal meeting, ahead of today’s first real challenge for the new administration, with a series of key meetings in Brussels over Ireland’s troubled finances.

Earlier in the afternoon a sprightly but nervous looking Mr Kenny met the President where he was handed his own seal of office as Taoiseach. Inside in the state reception room standing next to Ms McAleese in front of a wall of cameras and gripped in a never- ending handshake with her, he raised an almost childlike smile when one photographer beckoned him with the words “here Taoiseach, Taoiseach!”

With a brief wave to the awaiting media, the grinning Mayo man then retired to a private room with the President for tea, where he was joined by his wife Fionnuala and three children Aoibhinn, 18, Ferdia, 16, and Naoise, 14.

Speaking outside before returning to the Dáil to announce his cabinet, he replied when asked by reporters if it was a good day for the country:

“I hope so, I hope I can prove that.”

The immediate days ahead will surely allow him that opportunity.