Enda’s ‘twaddle’ fails to impress

POOR, confused, rudderless Fine Gael.

Enda Kenny, by invoking the image of a Celtic and Christian land, in his address to Fine Gael Dáil candidates last Tuesday, was not doing himself or his party any favours.

The mantle of the odious, crawthumping Oliver J Flanagan descended upon the man who would be Taoiseach.

So Enda’s vision of Ireland — the core Ireland, so to speak — excludes people who are of Viking, Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Irish descent.

That is bad enough, but where does it leave the million or so unionists Fine Gael claims it would like to see as part of a united Ireland?

And of rather more immediate relevance, what is our burgeoning immigrant population supposed to think of this outbreak of intolerance — unthinking or otherwise?

Had Enda confined his comments to Christianity he would have had the doubtful merit of at least being consistent with our constitution.

But that ‘Celtic’ reference smacks of nationalistic bilge, with its toxic implications of racial purity and blood sacrifice, the sort of quasi-mystical nonsense championed by Patrick Pearse, Sinn Féin/IRA and the mercifully dwindling band of xenophobic primitives who still haunt the nether regions of Fianna Fáil.

It was very painful to resign, as I did, from the party that my family had represented in the Dáil and Seanad for over 50 years.

After two deeply uncomfortable years of Mr Kenny’s leadership I finally realised that Fine Gael had no ideas, no courage and no convictions.

But even then it was a hard decision to make.

Had I realised Mr Kenny believes in this kind of twaddle, it would have saved me the soul-searching.

As I say, poor old Fine Gael, a party for which I retain a considerable affection, a party of decent people who are daily betrayed by the gaping void that is its leadership.

Maurice Dockrell

12 Glenomena Grove

Blackrock

Co Dublin