Inquiry showed once gung-ho Taoiseach to be a weak performer

IMAGINE for a moment that it is April 2007 and the leaders of Fine Gael and Labour are hosting a joint press conference. It is two weeks before the general election and they have just announced their intention, if elected, to put us on a surer economic footing.

Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte tell the assembled journalists that it would be their intention to widen our tax base by introducing a property tax and water charges, and that they are planning to introduce a law to stop Irish people buying property in utterly daft locations, either here or abroad, in an effort to save them for themselves.

You really don’t need a great imagination to realise that this one press conference would have been political suicide for the two men. It may have been courageous, and good and sound politics, and ultimately saved us at least some of the pain of the recession years, but these proposals would never have gotten further than whatever room they were announced in.

Remember how, back then during his long period in opposition, Enda Kenny, often seemed to be hanging on to the Fine Gael leadership by the skin of his teeth. Such a “lunatic” announcement would have pushed his detractors over the edge.

Social media wasn’t as big then as it is now so there is less of a likelihood of one of the frontbench people, from either party, calling for the resignation of their leader on Twitter within minutes. But almost certainly such a call would have been reported on the next hourly news headlines.

We may like to conveniently forget this but the very last thing most Irish people wanted to hear about in 2007 was fiscal responsibility. There was a tsunami of opinion that you were a Neanderthal if you didn’t believe in cutting tax. I remember at one point Micheál Martin, the then minister for health, who was regularly being slapped down by then finance minister Charlie McCreevy for requesting more funding, suggested that we might all consider the idea of paying more in tax to fund our health system. At the time the notion seemed ridiculous to most people.

During those months in 2007, leading up to that general election we had spent much of our time listening to the most incredible tales of a fiscal fantasy world from the then Fianna Fáil taoiseach Bertie Ahern at the Mahon Tribunal. Let us never forget the explanation of how a ball of money in his possession had been conveniently won on the gee gees. In truth he could have said that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him in Drumcondra and handed over the cash. We simply chose to ignore how those tales of his personal finances stunk to high heaven. This man was returned to the Department of the Taoiseach after a highly successful election. The Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, while not in government, returned with a party that had been boosted by almost twenty seats.

What would that Fine Gael figure have been if he had stood up at the manifesto launch that day and said “listen up, this property tax money won’t go on forever, we need to start raising more taxes, we need to turn what is essentially a tax ledge into a proper tax base”. Well, as mentioned earlier he would not still have been party leader by the time the election result came in.

So Enda didn’t make any kamikaze-like truth serum outbursts, instead he told us if made Taoiseach he would cut the standard rate of tax by 2% along with a few other mind boggling proposals —they were that even back then and positively insane when looked at in today’s context..

Incidentally that manifesto also promised to increase the old age pension to “at least” €300 per week by 2012; to give a laptop to every child entering secondary school; not to mention scrapping all plans to introduce postcodes to the country which they viewed as “nothing short of a Junk Mailers Charter”.

At his party’s ard fheis earlier that year Labour leader Mr Rabbitte had unveiled a surprise plan (a surprise in every way given that it was coming from the Labour Party) to cut the standard tax rate from 20% to 18% within two years of coming into power. Ironically at that time Labour was attempting to spike Fianna Fáil accusations that Labour was a tax and spend party that could not be trusted with the economy.

If we roll it forward to the banking inquiry last week we had the clash between Enda Kenny and Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty. The Donegal TD, who is performing very well at the inquiry, persistently asked our now taoiseach about that 2007 promise to slash income taxes, which would have narrowed our tax base further just as the economy was beginning to fall apart. The taoiseach, who had started out so gung ho with his partisan jibes at Fianna Fáil, simply ended up reinforcing the notion that he is a weak public performer, and that he was picking unfairly on Fianna Fáil.

That was quite a feat given that he would have been pushing an open door as far as so many people are concerned in terms of holding Fianna Fáil responsible for our economic catastrophe. We do expect our politicians to lead by example and to be model citizens but anyone who was around during those heady days of 2007, when we were desperate to hang on to the good times, knows that we had zero tolerance for anyone who may have attempted to wreck our political buzz. They were human too, and wondered would they languish forever on the opposition benches given what was then the unique relationship between Fianna Fáil and the Irish electorate.

But what is far less understandable is why the Taoiseach, and Pat Rabbitte and indeed the Tánaiste Joan Burton did not attempt a little plain speaking at the banking inquiry on why they behaved as they did and why it was ultimately a terrible way to “do” politics. It may just have been the perfect opportunity to adopt a more personally reflective tone on the dangers of making promises at general election time that cannot or should not be fulfilled.

For all their protests there is a strong suspicion that the horrible lessons we learned through the economic bust are being forgotten. This is reinforced by the failure to put down the political boxing gloves. The ongoing Irish Water shambles, which puts further pressure on the Government, coupled with poor recent opinion poll ratings, points far more towards a reaction of panic and self-preservation than any attempt to start doing things a little differently.

It would be really interesting to see Fine Gael back in Government for a second term without having Fianna Fáil as a whipping boy. How might Enda Kenny cope? It’s a pity he didn’t give some indication of that during his banking inquiry appearance rather than falling back on old and tired habits.

There is a strong suspicion that the horrible lessons we learned through the economic bust are being forgotten