Enda’s bad grasp of Euro-speak means a rate cut is all babble
In reality, Mr Kenny has been on the back foot at these Euro-aggro-ago-go get-togethers since his first disaster-laden burst onto the EU scene on March 11.
Mr Kenny was just two days in power and heading a party 14 years in opposition — and both liabilities were key ingredients in the ensuing cocktail of failure.
As the Irish Examiner revealed, EU Council president Herman Von Rompuy offered Ireland the best deal it could hope for, a 1% cut in our emergency bailout interest rates in exchange for a looser than loose promise to look again at corporation tax.
But Mr Kenny turned it down and Von Rompuy fumed privately that he would never stick his neck out for the Irish again.
That 1% cut would have saved Ireland €450 million a year, and Enda has been trying to regain ground ever since as the rate reduction mess is one piece of bad news he cannot lay at the door of the previous fiasco-ridden Fianna Fáil administration.
But yesterday, there was a flurry of the mildest excitement as Mr Kenny swept into the pre-summit meeting of centre-right leaders and moved his position on the rate cut from oblique to slightly less vague.
“There is a form of words that is being discussed and I would hope that we would make some progress on it, but I am not sure we will be able to finish it all now.”
An aide then clarified the situation with a brutal injection of realism: “There is always a discussion about a form of words going on.”
At the gathering of the European People’s Party, Mr Kenny cut a lonely figure, with an empty space next to him and stuck down the “junk bond” of the huge oblong table near the Greeks.
After the meeting, which seems to have been little more than a mass happy-slapping session for the Greek conservative opposition leader who has tried to curry favour at home by coming out against the terms of the rescue package offered to Athens, Enda — perhaps shaken by events inside the gathering and fearing he could be next for such a going over — was back to square one and admitting no progress was going to be made on Ireland’s rate cut at this summit.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan now plays down the effects of a rate cut, saying it would now “only” garner €175m a year due to outside factors and that this would not be worth trading our low corporation tax for.
Well, try telling that to a worried special needs parent, or low-paid hospitality worker facing their miserable income being savaged further by Richard Bruton’s proposed “reforms” — cuts — to wage floor deals.
That “meagre” €175m would not be sniffed at by them — especially as far more than that was on offer in March in return for just a few woolly words on corporation tax that would have never threatened it.
And let’s not even get into the fact that it’s not a rate cut, but a debt cut Ireland needs, as the nation will never be able to pay back the loans it is already saddled with.
But then, nothing is every really made simple in Euro-speak — just examine the rigmarole laid out in the summit guide regarding access.
“Only pin holders of a red floater badge combined with a personal blue, grey or green/yellow badge will be permitted to enter the Red Zone on level 50,” it bemusingly states.
And don’t even think of getting onto level 80, the VIP dining area, without a “gold float” pass combined with a red and blue badge — though there’s no need to fret, Mr Kenny has one.
The upshot is that while Enda may be considered a golden floater by his European colleagues, the Taoiseach’s dreams of securing a better bailout deal for Ireland look like getting well and truly flushed.
