O’Dea’s defenders didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory either
But, wittingly or unwittingly, Fianna Fáil has been behaving as if being honest is despicable.
“The difference between us and them is that we never go on with that ‘holier than thou’ bullshit,” one Fianna Fáiler told Seán Duignan when he was Government Press Secretary in the 1990s. “You’ll never find us accusing them of being crooks and thieves, yet they keep throwing that stuff at us. To tell the truth when we’re faced with one of these blasted allegations, the first thing we whisper to one another is ‘did we do it?’ ”
Publicly, however, their first reaction is to blame someone else. Nobody ever seems to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong. They have squandered more than €60m on useless voting machines, and when the scandal over the money plundered on expenses at FÁS was exposed, Rody Molloy was enticed to quit by being paid around €1 million. For what?
Having inherited the Celtic Tiger in 1997 as it was reaching maturity, Fianna Fáil has butchered it. The party’s much-hyped promise to tackle the growing criminal culture has turned out to be the emptiest promise of all.
In the latest controversy over false allegations, Willie O’Dea first swore out a false affidavit trying to blame the press for supposedly misrepresenting him. Then he tried to blame a garda for supposedly misinforming him.
Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Justice, did not blame the garda – he blamed Fine Gael. Nonsense. O’Dea was the author of his own downfall.
He is a barrister, and he knew he was being taped when he made the false allegation to Mike Dwane of the Limerick Leader, and then he drew up the affidavit denying what he said without even bothering to check with the reporter. This compounding of his original recklessness was unworthy of any minister, whether he was acting in a public or private capacity.
Dermot Ahern was equally reckless when he came to O’Dea’s defence on Monday by trying to smear Fine Gael who did not make the false accusation or draw up the untrue affidavit – O’Dea did.
Unlike the formidable list of Fianna Fáil ministers who were sacked – Charlie Haughey, Neil Blaney, Brian Lenihan, Albert Reynolds, Ray Burke, Padraig Flynn – Willie O’Dea eventually did the honourable thing and saved the Taoiseach from having to ask the President to dismiss him. But Micheál Martin acted the bootboy on Prime Time on Thursday night by repeating the scurrilous allegation against Fine Gael.
Some people seemed to be taken in by these tactics. Fianna Fáilers have been obscuring their own mistakes by blaming Fine Gael. The worse the Government does, the more people blame Enda Kenny.
That should be transparently absurd, but the whole thing is clouded by Fine Gael’s own history of internal turmoil. It has had 10 leaders since it was formed in 1933. The first of those, Eoin O’Duffy, was dumped before they could even elect him to the Dáil. The real questions should be about his appointment, rather than his removal. He was a neo-fascist flake.
WT Cosgrave, who had proved a safe pair of hands during the 1920s when he led the Cumann na nGaedheal governments, succeeded O’Duffy. Richard Mulcahy, who had been forced to resign as Minister for Defence during the Army Mutiny almost 20 years earlier, succeeded WT Cosgrave in 1944.
Mulcahy led Fine Gael into government in 1948, but he unselfishly allowed John A Costello to become Taoiseach because he realised Seán MacBride and Clann na Poblachta would have difficulty in accepting him as Taoiseach over his civil war involvement.
James Dillon, who succeeded Mulcahy as party leader in 1959, had actually been forced out of Fine Gael in 1942 over his opposition to the country’s wartime neutrality. He did not rejoin the party until 1953. As a master of invective he went down well with the party faithful, but he might as well have been shearing a pig – he caused a lot of squealing but got precious little wool.
Liam Cosgrave followed in 1965. He was an honourable man who did what he believed was right for the country. When Fianna Fáil sought to combat the growing unrest over the North in 1972 by introducing legislation to strengthen the Offences Against the State Act, Cosgrave refused to oppose the move, much to the indignation of many in his own party. Those he alluded to as “mongrel foxes” were about to topple him.
The Fine Gael parliamentary party voted 38 to 8 to oppose the Fianna Fáil legislation on December 1, 1972. Six of the seven who had backed the Cosgrave line then switched, leaving only Cosgrave and Paddy Donegan ranged against the others who seemed more interested in exploiting the opportunity to embarrass Jack Lynch and his government. Those opposing Cosgrave included not only his deputy leader, TF O’Higgins, but also two future Taoisigh – Garret FitzGerald and a young John Bruton. But as the bill was being debated that night two loyalist bombs went off in Dublin, killing two people and wounding more than 100 others.
Cosgrave could not be found, so his deputy leader took it on himself to withdraw Fine Gael’s opposition. It was still taken for granted, however, that the missing Cosgrave was finished as party leader. But he was actually on television that night to great effect.
“By Saturday morning he was widely seen as the hero of the hour,” according to Garret FitzGerald. Cosgrave was “the man who stood firm and had, in tragic circumstances, been proved right.” He became Taoiseach little over three months later.
GARRET FitzGerald succeeded Liam Cosgrave, when the latter stood down in 1977. FitzGerald was the architect of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, but he will not be remembered as one of the more effective Taoisigh. He was repeatedly undermined by the cynical opportunism of Charles Haughey and his backers in the Catholic hierarchy. In time, however, Garret’s greatness, and his shining honesty, will be recognised.
Alan Dukes, who succeeded FitzGerald in 1987, helped to lift the country out of the recession of the 1980s. By putting the national interest first, he provided probably the most effective opposition in the history of the state, but he was shafted by those in Fine Gael who were more interested in power. His successor, John Bruton, was similarly shafted even after he had led the government that helped to nurture the Celtic Tiger. Poor leadership has not been Fine Gael’s problem so much as supposed followers being blinded by the politics of short-term partisanship.
The immediate political focus will probably turn on the appointment of a new Minister for Defence, but do we need one? This portfolio has been an embarrassment to various governments, beginning with Mulcahy during the Army Mutiny, Jim Gibbons during the Arms Crisis, Paddy Donegan’s “thundering disgrace,” Brian Lenihan’s “mature recollection,” and now Willie O’Dea’s affidavit.
Enough is enough.
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