War of words over Enda’s ‘no go’

The failure of Taoiseach Enda Kenny to appear on tonight’s Prime Time Seanad abolition debate has resulted in a war of words between political parties with Fine Gael accusing RTÉ of “trying to artificially manufacture a leaders’ debate.”

Seventeen days after RTÉ issued invitations to both political parties, Fine Gael last night still had not nominated anyone for the one-hour Montrose debate against Micheál Martin to be hosted by Miriam O’Callaghan.

Last Friday week, Enda Kenny told RTÉ he would not take part in the leaders’ debate.

Fine Gael deputy director of elections Regina Doherty accused RTÉ of trying to “exclude non-political voices”, demanding that two non-political representatives from either side should join the politicians, increasing the panel to four.

“To date RTÉ has not offered any valid reason for excluding non-political voices from the panel,” she said, claiming “this approach is clearly a break with practice in previous referendums”.

However, Fianna Fáil last night accused Fine Gael of “play acting” and appealed to the party “to show a bit more respect for voters”.

“It is increasingly clear that as far as Fine Gael are concerned, the referendum is in the bag and they don’t want to upset the result by being confronted with the truth in open debate”, aFianna Fáil spokesman said.

“It is our hope that they stop the play acting of the last week, confirm who is replacing Enda Kenny in the leaders’ debate and show a bit more respect for voters.”

Last night RTÉ sources said the programme would feature “a two-person panel plus a substantial contribution from the audience.”

RTÉ confirmed the Government had agreed to take part, but hadn’t nominated who its representative would be.

Behind the scenes the political parties waged a war of words, with Fianna Fáil sources accusing Richard Bruton of “running scared” of Micheál Martin “by attempting to dilute the panel to get the focus off himself”.

It also accused Fine Gael of treating RTÉ and Fianna Fáil in a “shoddy manner” saying if a senior Fine Gael minister isn’t nominated for the debate, it would have to “re-examine” its party leader’s position.

A Fine Gael source said the party was surprised RTÉ was “seeking to treat Micheál Martin as leader of the no campaign when he doesn’t seem to have a poster up outside Dublin 2 and instead of making substantive arguments about the Seanad he spent the last week talking about TV debates”.