Will Enda board the emigrant ship buoyed by fat EU salary?
But if the Taoiseach lands the plum €300,000-a-year post of president of the European Council, in December, he won’t be slumming it in the ‘Other Q’ at the Ryanair departure gate like the thousands of youngsters whose dole he slashed without providing anything near the required number of suitable training and education places needed to bump them back up to a slightly less meagre level of benefits.
That act of ‘drive-bye’ budget cruelty was a deliberate move to send even more of our bailout refugees abroad — 89,000 in the year to last April, according to the CSO — but now Mr Kenny is being spoken of as the successor to Herman Von Rompuy, as he has so pleased our former pay masters.
German chancellor Angela Merkel is, apparently, a fan. And what’s not for her to like? One imagines she never found Mr Kenny’s company especially challenging.
Mr Kenny is also in favour in London, and Ms Merkel needs to throw David Cameron a bone as she has made it clear she will not pander to his desperate, short-term political stunt in claiming he can significantly renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU ahead of an in/out referendum in 2017.
Mr Kenny is still a Johnny Foreigner in British eyes, but at least he can speak English, and while Enda isn’t the kind of name you would trip over much at Eton (and, thanks to Mr Cameron, there are more public-school boys like himself in the British Cabinet than women), at least it is not as dodgy-sounding as Von Rompuy.
And Mr Kenny was certainly glad-handing anyone that moved when the European People’s Party (EPP) gathered at Dublin’s convention centre, as he was feted as the bailout boy by the austerity-junkie collection of right-wingers from across Europe.
Not that our own, home-grown, hard-left street opposition exactly bathed themselves in glory on the first day of the meeting, as they cleverly tried to block a road that had already been blocked for security reasons, and then branded Ukrainian opposition leader, and former boxer, Vitali Klitschko, “fascist scum”.
Unfortunately, the transitional government in Kiev does include neo-fascists (as, even more worryingly, have recent Italian governments), but Mr Klitschko is not one of them.
And look who else is cheering on Mr Kenny to go all Continental on us? None other than Lucinda Creighton.
Indeed, Ms Creighton thinks it would be a huge honour for Ireland to see Enda take up the reigns in Brussels, and, of course, her endorsement would have nothing to do with the fact his resignation as Taoiseach would be a huge relief to her, and pave the way for her and fellow X-Case legislation rebels to return to the Fine Gael fold.
Never one to knowingly avoid publicity, or an opportunity to wind-up Mr Kenny, Ms Creighton was telling all who would listen that it was, in fact, her idea to bring the conference to Dublin, and as she remains vice-president of the EPP until 2015 — no matter what the Taoiseach thinks — she had every right to be there.
Even the fact that the convention appeared to coincide with her due date did not phase Ms Creighton. But, luckily, in the end she avoided being known as the woman who in the space of a year went from Fine Gael to the Reform Alliance, and then into labour at the EPP gig.
But having all these Euro boys and girls back in town reminds us of those awful days when the Troika poured over the country’s books, and imposed a harsh fiscal framework we had to live by, or else. Isn’t it great that all that is now behind us, after Mr Kenny announced National Bye-Bye Bail-out Day on December 16?
Oh, but it seems that was all a bit of a stunt, too. As well as being behind us, the Troika is also ahead of us, and will be back on our case next month.
This is because Ireland remains, in what Brussels, in its usual PR-friendly, human face of happiness way, calls ‘post-programme surveillance’ and, thus, our economic ‘independence’ means we only get checked-up on two times a year now, instead of the four times to which we were subjected during the bailout.
Strange that the Troika did not feel the need to call on the Justice Minister Alan Shatter, the gardaí, or GSOC to advise them on ‘surveillance’ issues, given the recent goings-on.
Indeed, that whole, weird, GSOC/whistleblower, squalid episode was redolent of how quickly the Irish political establishment went down hill as soon as the Troika (nominally) withdrew from our shores.
Not that we needed them anyway, according to U2’s Bono, who, in a piece of nonsensical economic analysis and trickle-down patronisation, told the EPP that the “Irish people bailed out the Irish people,” and this was “despite” the Troika.
Yep, the EU-ECB-IMF just provided the €64bn in emergency funding needed to keep the lights on after the disaster of the last Fianna Fiasco/Green government. What did the Troika ever do for us?
Perhaps Bono should direct his analytical skills onto the fact that the people of this country also struggled through despite him and his super-rich band-mates switching a large chunk of their tax liability to the Netherlands, so as to avoid Irish rates.
When, rightly, preaching to the EPP about the need to achieve the UN goal of providing 0.7% of GDP to overseas aid, Bono could also have reflected that if U2 paid all their due taxes at home there would be more money to go around for the needy, both here and abroad.
But as we prepare to wave bye bye, with a tear in our eyes, to the latest economic emigrant, Enda, we can take comfort in the fact that, like a real-life political Buzz Lightyear, it seems as if Mr Kenny will at least live the right-wing dream and go ‘to austerity and beyond’.
