In the firing line: Enda’s enduring legacy is not written just yet

Abandoning the recovery to powerful vested interests would be a reputational demise Enda could not whitewash, writes Gerard Howlin

LAST night saw the second instalment of RTÉ’s Enda: Last Man Standing.

It’s the story of the improbable rise of an unlikely leader, who, it transpired, is possessed of extraordinary political stamina. That stamina showed during the seventy days between the general election and the formation of this improbable Government. Enda was down but not out.

And now he is not only back, he is determined to stay. The unanswered question is for what? We will find out over the coming week or two.

Every major crisis, either politically within Fine Gael or within government later, had parameters or at least a clear finish line.

He might consider that a measly reckoning of his years in government from 2011-16. But Enda had the troika for the first two years, so it was a case of colouring by numbers. When there are no choices, even very difficult decisions are relatively easy. The point is, there was no choice. After the departure of the troika in December 2013, Enda’s political management became ropey. Victory was declared too fulsomely, too soon.

The nascent promise to ‘keep the recovery going’ was too much, too soon to be sustainable politically in a scarred Irish landscape.

The disaster of the local and European elections in 2014 had their own specific context around euphemistically described ‘justice’ issues and, of course, medical cards.

The decisive end of the attempt at continuous self-congratulation, which began in Enda’s nationally televised address on the departure of the troika, came on February 26 this year. The result is the 32nd Dáil — the fallout is an apparently unchallenged demand for pay ‘restoration’ within the public service. The demand for pay ‘restoration’ is embedded in the narrative of recovery, told repeatedly and prematurely by the last government.

As a political investment, it yielded only unexpected and staggering losses, for those in government who like Enda, made the wager.

Now, the principal sum must be repaid, beginning with members of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland and gardaí.

So for Enda Kenny, the last man standing, it is the moment of truth. He has faced, and largely passed, multiple political tests that would, and did, floor others. If there were serious and avoidable failings of political management in the last government, his party has paid the price — ultimately that is more the froth than the substance.

His previous government largely delivered good leadership for the first four of its five years. Its final budget, however, was both a return to louche electoral politics and a slackening of standards that ironically fed into the lack of welcome he found during the election campaign. Last month’s budget was another sign of the slackening fiscal accretion. Neither budget was a decisive event, but each was a slight accretion in indolence and cynicism, when none can be afforded.

It is in this context that the last man standing faces probably his last and greatest challenge: The public service.

I say the public service and not Brexit because while the latter is unquestionably an enormous issue, it is to a significant extent outside our control. Enda, determined to stay on — and on — correctly fastened on Brexit as a credential to enhance his own longevity.

There will be no Brexit minister partially because the case for such a position is not as compelling as some of its advocates say, partially because making such a role at the cabinet table would mean pulling apart a government barely held together, and partially because Enda needs the gig. He has credentials too. But either way, we will be more a taker than a maker of the ultimate outcome.

On public-service pay, it is entirely different. This is the first whole-of-government, macro-economic test of an effectively sovereign Irish administration since before the crash.

In the first instalment of Enda: Last Man Standing on Monday, Michael Noonan reminisced on how he had worked with three taoisigh over the course of his career. Of the three, Enda is the “most effective”, he said. The gravitas of the delivery deliciously masked the flatterer. It was a brilliant lick of the tongue.

Now it is time for Paddy to find out. What stuff is Enda made of? There is more than money at stake. It is not only €30m for gardaí, which, as RTÉ’s Ingrid Miley said, was found “down the back of the sofa” but on receipt was so paltry as to be unworthy of offering to the wider membership for consideration.

No, it is about more than money. Public-service unions will, as a pack, fall on the exchequer for any deal given to teachers and gardaí. Pay and pensions comprise 36% of the current budget and, without a pay policy, that allows for simultaneous investment in public services, as distinct from public servants, within the Stability and Growth Pact. We don’t have any budgetary policy at all.

And if there is no effective budgetary policy, then there is no effective government.

Thus, Enda, as he leaves government, is responsible for taking us back to what he found on arrival in the Taoiseach’s chair. The detail of the situation is different, but the underlying condition is the same. Noonan might eventually require a different reminiscence.

Two taoisigh that I readily recall made state-of-the-nation addresses on the economy. Charles Haughey in 1980 announced that “...as a community, we are living a way beyond our means”. He then continued to squander scarce national patrimony. His reputational recovery came only when he did tighten the national belt, but not his own, after 1987.

Enda Kenny in December 2013 — and since — oversold recovery. But he has largely governed well.

The overreach of his last two budgets could, in hindsight, be portrayed only as blips. Abandoning the economy and the recovery to powerful vested interests, who — unlike others, and their own genuine sacrifices notwithstanding — never took the full brunt of the crash and have relatively generous pensions to look forward to, would be a reputational demise that Enda Kenny could not whitewash.

The complexity of the challenge facing the Government is enormous.

It must hold the line on pay. It must simultaneously shore up political support. It must — and this is central to shoring up political support — also ensure that more public services continue to function than cease working.

Labour and Sinn Féin have effectively abandoned the national interest in the hope of sectoral preferment by demanding a scenario post-Lansdowne Road be fast- forwarded.

AAA-PBP was there long ago and Fianna Fáil is on the fence. We shall see now if Enda stands at the last or folds before he falls.