Fiscal space: When you’re explaining, you’re losing

It is often said that when you are explaining, you’re losing.

Fri, 05 Feb, 2016 - 00:00

Daniel McConnell

Fine Gael and Michael Noonan were having to do an awful lot of explaining yesterday on his “fiscal space” plans.

In layman’s terms, this refers to the extra money the Government estimates it will have each year to spend between now and 2021.

Both at the party’s launch of its Long Term Economic Plan and on radio later in the day, Mr Noonan accepted it was complicated but argued that his figures were actually sound, rather than drawn up on the back of a cigarette packet.

Fine Gael, who are most likely to lead the next Government, have not had a good start to the campaign.

Not only have they mangled their economic message, thereby undermining their competency in managing the country’s finances, they have also suffered a poll setback. The Irish Times poll saw Fine Gael’s rating drop two points to 28%, and with Labour becalmed and unmoved at 7%, the Coalition is a long way short of re-election.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was forced to counter accusations that he was hiding from the media and snubbing a major interview on RTÉ’s Six One.

He said he was not aware of an invitation to appear last night, and denied being in hiding.

Speaking on the campaign trail in Mullingar, Mr Kenny said: “I didn’t know I was invited to it. Obviously I haven’t access to all of the diaries here. I have a lot of interviews to do over the next period and I will participate in the debates that take place. Why wouldn’t I?”

He said he was “sorry RTÉ were upset” about his non-appearance. “You will see enough of me, maybe too much over the next couple of weeks, believe me,” he said.

But Fianna Fáil were having none of it.

The opposition party accused Mr Kenny and Fine Gael of acting like the North Korean government by strictly limiting the questions allowed to be put to Mr Kenny at his first press conference of the election campaign. They described the move by senior Fine Gael figures as a “sad state of affairs”.

Michael McGrath, the Cork South Central TD and party finance spokesman, accused Mr Kenny of “ducking and diving” and of sending Health Minister Leo Varadkar out to do his “dirty work” on Six One.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when the Taoiseach of the day conducts his first press conference with a limit of two questions to be put from the floor,” Mr McGrath told reporters at a press event in Dublin.

“This isn’t North Korea, this is a democratic state, and you, as members of the media, are entitled to put as many questions as you want as far as I’m concerned to all of the political leaders going before the country in this election.”

However, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald pipped Mr McGrath to the quip of the day when she accused Noonan and the Government of the “fastest fiscal flip-flop in history”.

But she and her party again had to battle questions about links with Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, and she appeared to distance herself from the earlier description of Murphy being a “good republican”.

If it was bad for Kenny and Noonan at FG HQ, things weren’t much better for Tánaiste Joan Burton and Labour.

Out on the stump in Louth with SuperGed, sorry I mean super junior minister Ged Nash, the leader felt the heat from a most unhappy Mary Moran, the party’s second candidate in the constituency.

Having to share a stage with Nash and Burton, who both like to talk a lot, Moran felt edged out and vented her fury to my colleague Fiachra Ó Cionnaith about not wanting to be just “a token candidate”.

Earlier, Burton’s “obedient employee” come deputy leader, Alan ‘Power is a Drug’ Kelly let himself get embroiled in a heated and bizarre on-air spat with Mattie McGrath.

Elsewhere, Eamon Ryan and his merry Green army launched their bid to win promotion back to the big league, having been relegated in 2011.

Wiped out entirely from the Dáil after a disastrous term in office with Fianna Fáil, Ryan has battled bravely to try and remain relevant and lobbed in a few grenades on the Government, accusing them of repeating the mistakes of the past.