We’ve gotten off our knees to Rome, but we’re bowing to Paris and Berlin
The man who was regarded as something of a pre-general election liability by many, myself included and by the almost half of his Fine Gael parliamentary party who tried to remove him as leader a year ago, is turning out to be its strongest asset.
After years of consistent low personal opinion poll approval ratings, Kenny’s stock has soared, so much so that an opinion poll yesterday gave him a 53% satisfaction score, the first time that I can recall that he has had a majority of the public happy with him. If that poll had been taken after his performance in the Dáil on Wednesday — rather than last week — then it’s obvious to suggest that his stock would have risen much further. Kenny’s speech condemning the Vatican for its wilful failure to require its Irish employees — the bishops of the Catholic Church in this country — to both respect Irish civil law and, as pertinently, to do the morally right thing when it came to the sexual abuse of children by more junior employees, the priests, was incredibly strong and necessary.
It was also totally unexpected. Nobody had expected an Irish government to finally stand up in this way to the Vatican after generations of kowtowing. Few would have thought Kenny capable of it. It took personal courage on Kenny’s part to deliver it; his response to the scandal of Cloyne almost certainly was the finest hour of his political career. There will be a small number who will criticise him for it, of course. There remains a minority who will regard it as impertinent for Kenny to dare to attack the Catholic Church in the manner he did, ironically probably among the older and more conservative cohort where Kenny enjoys the bulk of his support. The usual suspects have not been slow to accuse him of misrepresentation of the Pope’s position.
There are also the cynical who will regard this “getting tough” stance as a useful diversion from Kenny and his government’s inability to get anywhere with the IMF/EU/ECB over renegotiating the onerous burden of our economic rescue and from its implementation of harsh cuts to public spending and increased spending as set down for it by the last government. It is somewhat easier to take on the Vatican, to whom we owe nothing, than those bodies upon whom we depend for cash. But while that is true, it should not deflect from the fact that running a government is about more than running an economy.
There are issues of great legal and social importance that must still be attended to and if the Government is constrained on what it can do economically then it may as well get on with being radical on the issues over which it retains some control.
It may also be the only way for this government to escape from its inevitable and eventual loss of popularity: it has to make a major impact on non-economic issues. The new government continues to benefit from the public’s hatred of Fianna Fáil and its blaming of it for the mess we’re in — although Labour must be shocked to find that its 18% share of support is exactly the same as Fianna Fáil’s. This explains the anomaly in the opinion poll findings. Dissatisfaction with the Government is at a whopping 55% and satisfaction is at just 34%, which is lower than Fine Gael’s popularity, even before its coalition partner’s support is taken into account. The public doesn’t like that the new government is implementing the old government’s hated deal with the IMF/EU/ECB but it isn’t blaming it for that — yet.
That will be tested when the Government introduces the next budget and on many other occasions before and after. There will be war when Phil Hogan introduces his household charge of €100-€200 per annum, for example. Kenny has promised not to raise income taxes and Eamon Gilmore not to cut social welfare, and the Government is committed to not reducing public pay rates further, but it is hard to see what else can be done, other than to introduce stealth taxes or a massive reduction of services. It may all be Fianna Fáil’s fault but in time the electorate may forget that and blame the new coalition for doing what the old one set out for it.
What must be encouraging for Kenny is that the controversy involving his handling of the closure of the accident and emergency department of Roscommon County Hospital has not damaged him unduly. What might have been politically damaging for him was the publication and broadcast of a tape of the pre-election pledge he made to the people of Roscommon.
As it happened I was in Roscommon town last Sunday, for the Connacht Football Final between the host county and Mayo. Hyde Park, where the game was played, is located beside a cemetery on the Athlone Road and just beyond that is Roscommon County Hospital. I was in the TV3 studio in the ground before the protest started but everywhere you walked in Roscommon on the morning of the match there were posters decrying the loss of the service, usually adorned by a crucifix to depict death. Not surprisingly Kenny decided not to attend the match; had he been there the potential for a riot was obvious. The Government’s excuse is that the closure is on the basis of health and safety, not economic grounds. As it happens there appears to be a good argument, made by many doctors, than victims of accident, trauma or sudden serious illness, may be better off getting treatment in an ambulance while driven a further distance.
Unfortunately, it turns out that HIQA, the standards agency for the health services, didn’t visit Roscommon before making its recommendation for it and other hospitals throughout the country that their A&E departments be downgraded. The decision may still be the correct one but it might have helped provide cover had HIQA at least made a visit to Roscommon and other places.
But the key point that the Government might take from it all is a public acceptance that the country can’t afford any more to indulge special or vested interests, especially when the benefit being conferred is a doubtful one, may be growing, out of necessity. Fine Gael created trouble for itself before the election by making a promise it couldn’t keep. Many in the public, however, might prefer that it do the right thing regardless of how it impacts on its popularity or ability to hold on to past promises. Many can see the irony in how people bitterly protest against the current administration of the health service on the basis that it does not deliver sufficiently but then argue against change that might actually make things better.
Even if keeping Roscommon A&E open might have been better for a small number in the surrounding area the reality, however, is that the Government’s power to indulge that and many other local issues is gone, for the economic reasons that brought Kenny to Brussels yesterday. Kenny’s experience at the emergency council of ministers meeting when he, along with many other European leaders, were almost onlookers to the latest decisions by Germany and France as to the future of the euro and dealing with the economic crisis, must have brought him down to earth sharply enough. We have gotten off our knees to Rome at just the time we are bowed to Paris and Berlin.
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