FF defends ‘disgraceful’ EU attendance
An analysis of attendance records for the monthly ECOFIN meetings backs up the claim by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil on Wednesday that the relationship between the last administration and our European partners was “nothing short of disgraceful”.
Between the general election in June 2007 and the one earlier this year, just 13 of 37 of these economic and finance meetings of the European Council were attended by Finance Ministers Brian Cowen and his successor, Brian Lenihan.
Fianna Fáil yesterday defended its record and pointed out that, this week, Minister Michael Noonan did not attend the ECOFIN meeting in Brussels.
Mr Cowen missed five of nine meetings in 2007, the year leading up to the economic crash and the country’s dive into recession.
After taking over as finance minister in May 2008, Mr Lenihan attended four of the eight meetings for the remainder of that year. He attended just two out of ten crucial finance meetings throughout 2009 as he tried to get a grip on the enormous banking and fiscal crisis engulfing the country.
In most cases, the Irish Permanent Representative to the EU stepped in to meet with other EU finance ministers.
Fianna Fáil said, in many of these cases, Fine Gael had withdrawn pairing arrangements in the Dáil and ministers were forced to stay for votes because the Government majority was precarious.
“Fine Gael’s position in the last Dáil was to criticise overseas travel by ministers and to force ministers to attend the Dáil for votes,” a spokesperson said. “Today, in response to valid criticism about the Taoiseach refusing to meet other European leaders, it then attacks the same ministers for missing meetings — this is just the same old cynical politics as usual,” he said.
In what was described as a “low blow” by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, Mr Kenny told the Dáil this week that “ministers in the last Government did not attend meetings they were supposed to attend.”
Asked later to back up these claims, a spokesperson said Mr Kenny had made the comments based on what he was hearing from people in Brussels.
Mr Kenny said: “This country was always exceptionally highly rated by our European counterparts, but that slipped over a decade of either non-attendance, non-participation, and an assumed arrogance that this country was on top of the pile and would stay there.”
A Fianna Fáil spokesperson rejected that relations had been undermined. He said the Irish Presidency of the EU was described as the best ever, last year EU states unanimously chose Ireland to chair the OSCE, and “so many European politicians took the highly unusual step of commenting on the passing of an Irish politician”.
