Fianna Fail leader failing to see the woods for the trees
Half an hour of prime time television and he said virtually nothing memorable. All the subject boxes were ticked, but few of the mental switches were flicked.
It was a rather stale, pale affair that saw a surge for the exits in the RDS hall even while the applause was continuing — most unusual for Fianna Fáil.
The theme for the transitional ard fheis was ‘A Fairer Way To Recovery’. And after the sorry-fest of last year’s gathering in the shadow of humiliating defeat, the party leadership was in post-apology mode but yet unable to deliver anything particularly new.
Mr Martin was trying to put the party in the recovery position, but it seemed to be more of an airy-fairy way to recovery than anything else.
Some internal innovations were to the fore, such as the novel idea of giving members some say in who their leader is, or whether they endorse any future programme for government backroom deal or not.
But the push for panel style “chats” on the main stage about key matters was less of a success though, and at one point descended into something reminiscent of the Jeremy Kyle Show when one non-party guest referred to Independent TD and self-confessed past user of acid and cocaine Luke “Ming” Flanagan as a “drug-addled muppet”.
However, it did create one of the more thought- provoking moments when one pondered who would be most offended by that remark — Dev, Ming, or The Muppets?
Back to the leader’s speech, and as like last year, the RDS was set-up a bit like a boxing ring with tiered seating on all four sides of the podium. But unfortunately, Mr Martin was fighting against a lack-lustre script — and losing.
He did get quite animated about Coalition plans to “sell off the woods owned by the people. The sale of our national forests should be stopped immediately.”
Quite right too — if you go down to the woods today, the last thing you want to be surprised by is Enda Kenny and his No-Care Bears having a privatisation picnic at our expense as they try to flog-off the logs to the highest bidder.
However, as the speech wore on there was a creeping feeling that Mr Martin could not see the woods for the trees.
Mr Martin was very annoyed about the unfairness of the property tax, but isn’t that the property tax the government of which he was a key member promised the troika as they surrendered Irish economic sovereignty?
So, Mr Martin now opposes what he helped set in train, and to cap the hypocrisy, the ard fheis rejected abolishing the tax and replacing it with the most credible alternative, a site valuation charge — truly, an FF non-solution to an FF problem.
Any direct reference to the troika was strangely absent from Mr Martin’s speech, and sadly, so was anything new.
Mr Martin was strongest when he talked about the Coalition’s empty political reform promises, noting that all Fine Gael and Labour had to show for them was a change in the status of their State-funded chauffeurs.
The Fianna Fáil rearguard who fled the fight at the last election were barred from standing for the party again as punishment for their desertion in the face of defeat, but the ard fheis still felt dominated by old faces and old ideas.
It is still quite an achievement for Fianna Fáil to have clawed its way back to the low 20s in the opinion polls two years after their biggest hammering, but it is also telling that same rating was deemed “disastrous” when achieved in the 2009 local elections, but is now greeted with delight.
For all the window dressing Mr Martin still looked like a prisoner of the past rather than a soldier of destiny.
