Enda apologised, so why has this sorry mess been so controversial?

IS it just me, or has the political world gone mad? I’ve never seen so much invective heaped on a political leader, from outside and inside his own party. 

Disgraced former US president Richard Nixon didn’t get as much abuse in his day, nor Charlie Haughey. Has Enda Kenny been accused of a major crime or cover-up? Listening to it, and reading it, day after day, I wonder: ‘what the hell is going on here?’

According to one headline, the Taoiseach is guilty of ‘dictatorial cronyism’. In that article, Michael McDowell, the former leader of the PDs (remember them and the damage they did?) accused Kenny of a “monumental lie”, “downright dishonesty”, and promoting “a culture of fear” — and that was before McDowell was fully into his sanctimonious stride.

McDowell wasn’t alone. I have lost count of the number of ‘serious questions’ that respectable political commentators said the Taoiseach had to answer.

His leadership is under question, apparently. John Deasy may lead a revolt. Either the entire political world, and the people who commentate on it, have lost their perspective, or something is happening behind the scenes. Or, maybe, I’m the one who has gone mad. Certainly, if anyone would follow Deasy anywhere, I have lost my reason entirely.

Here’s what happened, as far as I can tell (and let’s rule out the coincidences that have been suggested). Kenny wanted to find someone to run in the next election, as a running mate for Joe McHugh, in the Donegal North East constituency. His attention fell on a failed candidate in the local elections, John McNulty, a local (and seemingly popular) businessman and activist.

To build McNulty’s profile, Kenny nominated him to fill a vacancy in the Senate. No big deal — there was a vacancy on the cultural panel, for which McNulty would probably qualify, because he had worked locally in support of the Irish language. That’s neither new nor old politics — it’s normal, appropriate, democratic politics.

But to copperfasten his qualifications, somebody appointed McNulty to another vacancy, on the board of the state-funded Irish Museum of Modern Art.

That was the stroke politics — it was a pretty crude manoeuvre. But was it corrupt? No. Was it cronyism? Well, not by any definition I know.

To the best of my understanding, McNulty is neither friend nor relative of the Taoiseach. One of the Sunday papers suggested that McNulty lived about 15 minutes’ drive away from Kenny’s mother’s home town — but that’s surely stretching things a bit, don’t you think?

Yes, McNulty is a member of Kenny’s party. Since when does that constitute either corruption or cronyism? It would be weird if Kenny wanted to nominate anyone other than a member of Fine Gael for a Fine Gael vacancy in the Senate.

Look at the other members of the cultural panel in Seanad Eireann: Thomas Byrne, of Fianna Fáil; Deirdre Clune, of Fine Gael (now departed for the European Parliament); John Gilroy, of the Labour Party; Michael Mullins, of Fine Gael; And Labhrás Ó Murchú, an Independent. They’re all decent, hardworking senators. At least two of them don’t want to be there, and intend to be candidates in the next Dáil election.

But — no disrespect intended — you could look at that list of Senators for a long time before the phrase ‘cultural icon’ would pop into your head.

It seems highly unlikely to me, although I don’t know McNulty, that his addition to the list would detract from the cultural quotient on the panel.

So, if there’s nothing improper about Kenny’s desire to nominate McNulty to the Senate, was it improper to put McNulty on the board of IMMA?

It was inappropriate, simply because the only reason for doing it was to boost McNulty’s cultural credentials.

But there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with putting a businessperson on the board of any of our cultural institutions. IMMA already has a couple of such people on its board, and it’s chaired by a lawyer. All of its members are deeply committed to what IMMA does, and they are all deeply knowledgeable about modern art.

But they’re not all artists.

I’m an occasional visitor to IMMA — not as often as I’d like. The last time I was there was to see an exhibition of the work of the extraordinary Irish designer, Eileen Gray. One of the nice things about visiting IMMA — and one of its great challenges — is that you always seem to have the place to yourself.

It is a great institution, but one that needs marketing and increased accessibility. In other words, a couple of more businessmen mightn’t go amiss.

But then, on top of all that, Kenny did the unforgiveable. He apologised (bleatingly, according to McDowell, who never made a mistake in his life). What’s more, he took responsibility for the mess, said it wasn’t his finest hour, and promised it would never happen again.

How dare he? How could he? Tyrannical dictators and bullies never apologise. People who operate through fear never admit they are wrong.

Besides, there we were, with a nice, juicy political scandal on our hands (admittedly it had no real element of scandal about it).

It was going to distract us for days from discussing real issues — like, for instance, whether any of the fruits of our new-found growth might be used to address real and pressing social problems.

There’s a continuing crisis (a real crisis, tantamount to a scandal), of homelessness, of healthcare, of disability services and standards, of child protection and welfare.

But we wouldn’t have to think about any of that for a while yet (until it’s too late, actually), if we could spend another week carrying on about the Taoiseach’s awful behaviour, his bullying, his arrogance, his culture of fear.

According to the weekend news, the Fine Gael parliamentary party will be convulsed about it at its meeting this week, Labour will be in an agony of indecision, Fianna Fáil will be climbing up the high moral ground of the new politics, and Sinn Fein will be formulating even more challenging and insightful questions for the Taoiseach to answer.

It’s a mess. Kenny did a stupid, inappropriate thing, one of those old-fashioned political strokes that simply aren’t acceptable any more. But that’s all it was. And the Taoiseach took responsibility and apologised.

When was the last time you heard a political leader in Ireland say that he’d made a mess of something and it would never happen again?

As a matter of fact, I can’t remember any of Kenny’s predecessors — and certainly none of his critics — ever having done that. This mad, crazy idea that if you get something wrong, then you admit it and apologise? That couldn’t be new politics, could it?