Question marks raised over three of Enda’s speeches

Are recent mistakes indicative of a carelessness within Fine Gael, asks political editor Paul O’Brien

MISTAKES happen in politics as in any other facet of life. And sometimes those mistakes creep into speeches. Some speeches, however, politicians don’t want to get wrong — and question marks have been raised over at least three of Enda Kenny’s major speeches since becoming Taoiseach.

The most recent was, of course, last Sunday’s speech at the Béal na mBláth commemoration of Michael Collins. The speech was significant for a number of reasons. It was the 90th anniversary of Collins’ death. Mr Kenny was the first serving taoiseach to address the annual commemoration. The country remains mired in crisis, and the speech was an opportunity for Mr Kenny to spell out his government’s rescue plan and the progress being made. Add to all that the fact that Collins is a Fine Gael idol, and it’s easy to see why the Taoiseach would have wanted to get this one right. And yet, a real howler somehow slipped into the script and remained there.

Paying tribute to Collins’s civilian legacy, Mr Kenny described him as, among other things, “the outstanding organiser who brought Lenin himself to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked”.

But it wasn’t remotely true. And after the mistake was highlighted, the Government acknowledged as much and said an “inaccurate reference” had been made. It subsequently amended the transcript of the speech to read: “The outstanding organiser who brought Lenin’s attention to Ireland to see how the National Loan worked.”

So does any of this matter? Isn’t a mistake just a mistake, and nothing more? Or is it indicative of a carelessness within the Department of the Taoiseach and Fine Gael that raises questions about how they handle matters of state?

In terms of rejecting suggestions of carelessness, it would help Mr Kenny’s case if this had been the first time one of his major speeches had been questioned.

But it wasn’t.

When Barack Obama visited Ireland in May last year and spoke at College Green, Mr Kenny gave the introductory address. The only problem was that it sounded a little similar to some well-tuned ears. One section, it turned out, had been lifted from Mr Obama’s 2008 presidential victory speech.

Mr Kenny denied plagiarism, saying his use of the section had been a “tribute” to the US president, and done intentionally, even though the Taoiseach never mentioned the link while delivering the address.

And then there was the Cloyne speech, in which Mr Kenny delivered a thundering denunciation of the Vatican over the child sex abuse scandals in the Church.

In that Jul 2011 speech, Mr Kenny said Cloyne had proved to be of a “different order” to previous abuse reports “because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago”.

The Vatican questioned this claim, saying it was “unfounded” and that the Taoiseach had made “no attempt to substantiate” it.

When subsequently pushed on the matter by the media, Mr Kenny said he stood over his criticism of the Vatican and repeated his charge that Rome had failed to co-operate with a state inquiry as little as three years previously.

Importantly, however, he said his claim related to the Vatican’s response to the inquiry into the Dublin archdiocese rather than the later inquiry into Cloyne, both of which were conducted by the same commission of investigation.

While Mr Kenny might take issue with describing this as a “clarification”, that is precisely what it was.

Did it matter? There was no taking away from the significance of the speech, or the fiery nature of it, and the majority of the public, it seemed, were fully supportive of Mr Kenny’s stance.

But in such a crucial speech, where he had pretty much everything he needed to lay out an incontestable case, Mr Kenny gave the Vatican a thread at which to pull in an attempt to unravel his wider argument about Rome’s failures. That was careless.

And the Collins speech suggests the carelessness is continuing.