We’ve gotten off our knees to Rome, but we’re bowing to Paris and Berlin

ENDA KENNY might have floated to Brussels yesterday instead of flying.

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.