Reading between the political lines

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny made his displeasure known. But arguably a much more telling statement came from Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin.

Between the lines, it suggested — and this is solely this writer’s interpretation — that Labour saw evidence of a coordinated Fine Gael attack on the Croke Park Agreement yesterday.

But notions of a co-ordinated attack would be stretching it, to put it mildly.

Both Mr Kenny and Mr Howlin were reacting to the decision by eight Fine Gael TDs to co-author an article in the Irish Examiner raising questions about Croke Park.

Among the questions the TDs raised were:

* Why increments were “taken off the table” by the Government when they will add at least €170m to the public sector pay bill next year;

* Why there was “hesitation” in “properly tackling” allowances;

* Whether the savings produced by Croke Park were being over-stated;

* Why, apart from the chairman, there were no other independent members of the implementation body overseeing Croke Park.

The Taoiseach made clear he would prefer his TDs to make their views known privately at parliamentary party meetings rather than publicly through newspapers. “My preference is that people raise these matters where they are supposed to be raised,” he said.

Labour, by some distance the biggest defender in coalition of Croke Park, was even more unhappy. But Mr Howlin’s response hinted at something beyond mere unhappiness. It suggested there were deep suspicions within Labour about their coalition partners and who exactly in Fine Gael was pushing for the Croke Park debate to be reopened.

In the statement, Mr Howlin’s department first insisted that the Croke Park savings were accurate, and suggestions otherwise were “completely incorrect”.

The statement then proceeded to single out Eoghan Murphy, one of the eight Fine Gael TDs who had co-authored the article.

In a nutshell, the statement said Grant Thornton, the company hired to do an independent evaluation of some of the Croke Park savings, had spoken to Mr Murphy “and confirmed that they were satisfied with all the savings reported”.

From there, the statement went on to deal with a report in The Irish Times suggesting that the EU-ECB-IMF troika was dissatisfied with the scale of the Croke Park savings.

“The troika has never expressed concern in respect of the Croke Park savings, a fact that we have confirmed with the troika today,” Mr Howlin’s department said.

Nobody should read too much into the troika’s disavowal — because any official who spoke off the record or leaked information to a paper would hardly confess to it 24 hours later.

That is not how these processes work, and Brendan Howlin fully knows it. Nonetheless, his statement hints at what he and Labour may have believed was really going on yesterday.

One paper publishes an article detailing the troika’s concerns with Croke Park, but Mr Howlin says the troika never expressed such misgivings. Therefore, he may believe senior Fine Gael sources professing knowledge of the troika’s views briefed the paper.

At the same time, the Irish Examiner publishes the unprecedented article by eight Fine Gael backbenchers expressing dissatisfaction with Croke Park. To Labour’s eyes, it must have looked like a coordinated Fine Gael attack on the agreement — from the backbenches right to the top of the party.

But as is usually the case politics, the conspiracy theory fails to add up.

The Fine Gael leadership was definitely not pleased with the actions of the eight TDs. Enda Kenny’s public comments were one indication. But another is the fact that calls were made by Fine Gael HQ to some of the eight TDs to try and ascertain who exactly was the “driving force” behind the article. In other words, the article was as much a surprise to the Fine Gael leadership as it was to Labour.

And why did the eight do it? All first-time TDs, they would hardly be classed as rebels or trouble-makers or critics of the Taoiseach.

But they had tried to raise the issue repeat-edly at parliamentary party meetings in recent weeks, and felt they were getting nowhere — that the parliamentary party simply wasn’t an effective forum. Nobody in Government, either on the Fine Gael or Labour side, appeared to be listening. But they are now.