What kind of Taoiseach do we actually want?

ENDA Kenny’s real mistake wasn’t what he said in Davos.

Sat, 28 Jan, 2012 - 00:00

Paul O’Brien

It was what he said when addressing the nation ahead of the December budget.

“You are not responsible for the crisis,” the Taoiseach told citizens in therapeutic tones, presumably because he assumed this is what the country wanted to hear.

It sounded faintly patronising at the time, and appears even more patronising now, because we have seen what Mr Kenny really believes — that “people simply went mad borrowing” in “a system that spawned greed” and went out of control.

The question for the public now is which version of Mr Kenny they want.

Do they want the carefully-scripted, on-message Mr Kenny who simply tells people what they want to hear? Or do they want a Taoiseach who tells it as he sees it?

My own belief — for what it’s worth — is that a country is in fairly dire straits if it opts for leaders who merely tell them what they want to hear.

Leaders are elected to lead, not follow. And while they must be conscious of the public mood on any issue, they must not slavishly fall in line with it. Strong leaders have an ability to take tough and unpopular decisions.

For example, if this country had truly strong, visionary leadership during the Celtic Tiger era, we would today have a health service on a par with the best in Europe, economic crash or otherwise. But instead of reforming the health service during the boom, successive Fianna Fáil-led governments merely threw money at it, solving nothing. It was the easiest solution to the problem, but not the wisest one.

The Government does not have the luxury of endless resources to throw at problems, and is going to have to take a plethora of tough, unpopular decisions.

But it can only do that if it has a leader capable of driving — and defending — those decisions.

Enda Kenny can’t do that if he is trying to be therapist to the nation. It’s a troubleshooter that is required.

In that light, it is much more preferable that he speak his mind on issues rather than indulge in glib, populist statements.

The “you are not responsible for the crisis” line was the latter — for he clearly did not believe it.

His comments in Davos, by contrast, were of a leader saying what he actually believed.

That’s not saying his comments in Davos were necessarily correct — if he had said “some” people went mad borrowing, it might have been more accurate, as clearly not everybody did.

But better that we hear what the leader of the country really thinks than what he thinks we want to hear.

And as it happens, in tandem with developers, bankers, politicians and regulators fostering the “out of control” system that Mr Kenny referred to, it is clearly the case that there was a borrowing splurge in this country. Again, not by everybody, but by a sizeable swathe of the population.

If this wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t have been such a need for the Government to introduce new personal insolvency legislation this week, aimed at helping people struggling with vast debt overhangs, such as mortgage arrears, loans and credit card bills.

Again, distinctions have to be drawn, and Mr Kenny should have drawn them. There is a view within some quarters that “everybody partied” during the boom, which is absolute rubbish. It’s also not fair to equate, say, a young married couple who borrowed within their means to buy during the boom but are now struggling with negative equity to a speculator who borrowed extensively to purchase one investment property after another in the hope of making a killing.

Yet even accepting that Mr Kenny could have been more careful with his language, it is still better that he expressed his own thoughts rather those of a speech-writer or adviser.

The Davos controversy brings to mind an incident from 2007, when the then German ambassador to Ireland, Christian Pauls, created a diplomatic storm by describing this country as a “coarse place” where money was an obsession, junior ministers earned more than the German chancellor, and “chaotic” hospital waiting lists were tolerated.

Mr Pauls later said he had been mistranslated, but he was rebuked nonetheless by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which did not appreciate his intervention into Irish life.

Five years later, can anybody say Mr Pauls was wrong? And isn’t it better to have the debate than to stifle it?

Blame game

Brian Lenihan: Claimed ‘weall partied’.

* Enda Kenny during his pre-budget state of the nation address on Dec 5:

“Let me say this to you all. You are not responsible for the crisis.”

* Enda Kenny at the Davos forum this week:

“What happened in this country, people went mad with borrowing. The extent of personal credit, personal wealth created on credit, was done between people, banks [sic], a system that spawned greed to a point that this went out of control completely, with a spectacular crash.”

* The late finance minister Brian Lenihan on RTÉ’s Prime Time on Nov 24, 2010:

“Let’s be fair about it, we all partied.”

Opinions divided on Twitter

* Declan Ganley:

After yesterday, Enda Kenny should think about doing something other than pretending to lead Ireland; an embarrassing featherweight.

* Emmy Maher:

#Enda Kenny is a disgrace to the country! & his apology was not worth the 30 pieces of silver that Europe bought him for!

* Martin M:

I think it’s time for Enda Kenny to resign, it’s not right having politicians that tell the truth like that.

* Maria Colma O’Neill:

Enda Kenny you fool.

* Irelandannoysme: