Enda’s booty call fails to impress women of Ireland

WOMEN, eh? Can’t give them too much political power, can’t win elections without them.

The people Enda Kenny refers to as “housewives” — aka women — have always been a problem for Ireland’s ruling class.

But then Enda is all about the ladies, sorry housewives, sorry women, these days, isn’t he?

Just look at that booty call he desperately sent out this week. Oh, come on, not that kind of booty call — this is Enda we are talking about.

It was a rather odd analogy told by Mr Kenny and it rambled all over the place, but seemed to suggest that you know the economy is on the up when you can buy your girlfriend a pair of new boots.

It was a bizarre twist in fiscal rationalisation that eluded everyone from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, but at least it showed that the Taoiseach has suddenly woken-up to the fact that women make up the majority of the Irish population.

This seemed to slip his mind when he was packing, sorry, “enhancing”, the Oireachtas banking inquiry in order to ensure that it kept a built-in Government majority.

Not that he intended the probe to be in any way party political, of course — dear God, no!

So, after some farcical slapstick scenes in the Seanad — the one female member put forward for the inquiry did not turn up for the nomination vote, thus allowing the opposition to sneak their candidate on — Mr Kenny insisted he needed to expand the body. This was not to keep Government control (what a ridiculous notion!), but to ensure it contained a woman.

Yes, a woman.

So, in an extraordinarily magnanimous blow for radical feminism, the Coalition turned the major parliamentary probe of this political generation from a committee containing one woman out of nine to a committee containing one woman out of 11.

There’s progress for you.

Because, of course, the financial crash never impacted on the women of this country, did it?

Sure, maybe they had to wait a bit longer for their boyfriends to buy them those lovely new boots, but the mass unemployment, emigration, and general lost decade of depression magically bypassed woman-kind.

Luckily, the lack of what Fr Ted might call the “pretty girls” of the Oireachtas did not stop Central Bank governor, Patrick Honohan, making the inquiry arresting viewing: he insisted a more realistic attitude to Anglo and junior bond-holders was “overruled” on the fateful night of the bank guarantee in September, 2008.

But the strangely bashful central banker refused to say who was guilty of this momentous mistake.

Though, as the only other people in the room were the attorney general and the then Taoiseach — Mr Calamity himself, Brian Cowen — we can probably draw our own conclusions.

Indeed, the banking inquiry is turning into a giant, and very long, game of political Cluedo as we discover who murdered Irish sovereignty and left the twitching corpse of the national economy lifeless at the bottom of the stairs.

Spoiler Alert: It was Fianna Fáil, in the fiance department, with the bank guarantee.

But, at least there was a woman front and centre, in the form of Tánaiste Joan Burton, at the so-called Cabinet jobs summit this week — though, in the case of the Labour leader, it was more the case of a Save My Job Summit, as she faces a very tough fight to retain her seat in the looming general election. Ironically, it looks as if she will be battling it, out for the fourth and final place in Dublin West, with Cabinet colleague, and thrusting Thatcherite, Leo Varadkar.

This is partly because whenever Labour does come up with a policy that might resonate with voters, such as a very belated move on low pay, the Taoiseach tries to claim credit for it.

Or, as UTV Ireland anchor, Chris Donoghue, put it to Ms Burton: “Enda Kenny’s wearing your clothes, isn’t he?”

The Tánaiste trilled back that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but, really, let’s not go there.

The banking blindside apart, there was a mini-breakthrough for women in politics in July, when the shameful tally of two female Cabinet members was lifted to the slightly less risible figure of four out of 15.

And, given that Mr Kenny, in unleashing his much-fabled “democratic revolution”, had originally given Ms Burton and Frances Fitzgerald the portfolios of welfare and children (the housekeeper and the nanny), their rise, on merit, to the roles of Tánaiste and Justice Minister was significant.

To his credit, Mr Kenny is the Taoiseach who ensured that political parties would take a financial hit if they did not make sure at least 30% of candidates were women at the next election, but until the Cabinet shake-up it was hard not to conclude that this Coalition was the political equivalent of comedian Harry Enfield’s stinging parody of 1950s-style, public-information films, called ‘Women — Know Your Place!’ One of Enfield’s black-and-white films opens with a woman approaching a car and the angry, clipped, British male voiceover despairing: “She’s getting in the wrong side — she’s getting in the driver’s side!”

And in the sketch on how a lady should behave at a dinner party when politics is discussed, a woman who attempts to join in the discourse about the economy, rather than talk about kittens, is rounded on: “Oh dear, what’s this? One of the women is about to embarrass us all! The lady has foolishly attempted to join in the conversation with a wild and dangerous opinion of her own! What half-baked drivel! See how the men look at her with utter contempt!”

Unfortunately, the echoes of that announcer can still be said to echo in the darker reaches of Irish public life today.

Especially at the banking inquiry, where the message being beamed out is: ‘Birds, eh? What do they know?’