OPINION: The Taoiseach breaks his ‘covenant’

"I accept that my own sense of integrity and trust didn’t measure up here."

The blunt confession from Enda Kenny to the Dáil yesterday afternoon has brought full circle that “covenant” he entered into with the Irish people — on his first day as Taoiseach — to tell them the truth, no matter what the cost.

“The new Government will tell the people the truth regardless of how unwelcome or difficult that might be. We will tell it constantly and unreservedly. It is the only way because the people always have a right to know,” he said in March 2011.

In his admission yesterday that things were not done properly in Fine Gael’s nomination process for the Seanad by-election, he tried to draw a line under the damaging controversy. But Mr Kenny has still left many gaps in the story of how John McNulty came to be appointed to the Irish Museum of Modern Art board while planning to run for the Seanad.

He is laying the blame firmly at the door of his “senior party officials” who are not being named and will not be reprimanded for “the manner in which they handled” matters which — in the Taoiseach’s own assessment — are “below” usual standards.

The information available so far is that Mr Kenny interviewed Mr McNulty on a one-on-one basis, to establish his suitability to take up a seat on the Seanad Cultural Panel. The Donegal man suggested that he would like to take up a position on a board of a cultural institution. This didn’t matter, according to a spokesperson, because “the Taoiseach was satisfied on [the] basis of McNulty’s CV that he was suitable for the cultural panel”.

“After that interview, the Taoiseach’s involvement in the subsequent process was non-existent. He then trusted his officials to carry on with the nomination process,” he said.

In what we are led to believe was an entirely parallel process, unnamed Fine Gael senior officials passed Mr McNulty’s CV to Arts Minister Heather Humphreys.

Did they do so at the request of the Taoiseach? Not that his spokesperson was aware of.

Was Mr McNulty’s request to the Taoiseach to be placed on a cultural board entirely separate from his FG officials suggestion to the arts minister that she give him a job? Yes.

So how did they find out about his interest in joining a board? “You’ll have to ask them,” journalists were told.

The problem is those officials are not being identified. Ms Humphreys said that Fine Gael officials “made me aware of John McNulty’s interest in serving on a board under my remit”. Having looked at his qualifications she decided to appoint him “on merit”. She did not know he was going to be a Seanad candidate.

A spokesperson for the Taoiseach said he is entitled to be unhappy with his officials, without turning it into a witch-hunt.

The people who put him in office might argue they are entitled to the full account of what happened.