Paul Hosford: Fianna Fáil floods the airwaves to give air of calm control

Fianna Fáil's Jim Gavin speaking during the launch of his now brief presidential election campaign at the Exo Building in Dublin on September 28. File Picture: Damien Eagers/PA

In the teeth of a controversy, it is important to remain calm.

Publicly, you want to put on the air of calm control. To seem unflappable. Ready to answer the questions. Don't. Panic.

In Irish party politics, nothing says calm control like five members of Fianna Fáil — including two senior Cabinet ministers — going on the national broadcaster within five hours to each other to give their tuppence worth on the controversy surrounding Jim Gavin's sensational withdrawal from the presidential race.

In the hours after the former Dublin GAA boss's shock departure from the contest, Fianna Fáilers made themselves available for radio interviews with remarkable ease. 

While Billy Kelleher's view as the man defeated in the party's nomination process and Jack Chambers's view — as the director of elections for the ill-fated run — were understandably offered, Darragh O'Brien, Barry Andrews, and Niall Collins were also on the airwaves. 

By lunchtime, children's minister Norma Foley, Seán Fleming, Peter "Chap" Cleere, and Pádraig O'Sullivan had also answered the call from RTÉ as the party's membership dealt with the fallout in different ways.

Blame game

With Mr Gavin gone and his campaign posters still hanging around Leinster House, it was abundantly clear the blame game was not long in starting. Or, as one TD put it, "the arse covering is going to be unreal".

First out of the blocks was Mr Kelleher.

“The fact that we are now not involved in an election, that's very significant and important, from an Irish political perspective,” he said.

"We clearly didn't do our due diligence, didn't do enough interrogation. That was the issue I raised at the outset, the whole process.

“When I issued my first press statement on this issue in the middle of August, I was clearly concerned that there seemed to be no proper process in place. 

There was no scrutiny of candidates; names were being mentioned on an ad hoc basis

Mr Kelleher's criticism stayed far from personal. It focused on the process of selecting Mr Gavin, a process he lost out on, but his European colleague Barry Andrews was less circumspect. 

Mr Andrews took a swipe at Mr Chambers over his interview on Morning Ireland, where the public expenditure minister said Mr Gavin’s account had been contradicted by the former tenant.

“I listened to an interview this morning where Jack Chambers sort of implied that the party was mislead, and I think that is unfortunate,” Mr Andrews said.

“I’m not sure that we carried out the appropriate due diligence.

“Due diligence is about not taking things on face value, on having the political sensitivity to know what matters in a presidential election, and I really wouldn’t like to hear Jim Gavin being thrown under a bus on this issue.

“Of course, he made a mistake. He is now going to fix that.”

Scapegoat and problem

While their peers would queue up to give their opinions, it was Mr Chambers and Mr Andrews who effectively summed up the two camps in Fianna Fáil with regard to Mr Gavin — in one he is the scapegoat, in the other he was the problem.

If you fall into the former, Mr Gavin has been harshly treated by a party which was supposed to care for and protect and prepare him. 

Indeed, one TD questioned how Mr Gavin was not advised to pay back the money the second the press query had come in or, at least, how he was not better prepared for the question in Sunday's RTÉ TV debate. In it, he foundered and struggled in a bad answer that was actually better than the answer he gave to assembled journalists afterwards. 

In the former camp, Mr Gavin was a good candidate poorly handled. In the latter camp, Mr Gavin did not fully explain his dealings with his former tenant and, to use a footballing term, had given his party's ministers and staff a hospital pass. His failure to adapt to public speaking had impacted him in interviews and debates.

It is important to remember that Fianna Fáil ended up in this mess through all of its own making. While Fine Gael was setting out its process in April, and the parties of the left were meeting to find a common platform, Fianna Fáil was slow-walking itself into a corner which ended with an unnecessarily tetchy nominations process and a perceived coronation of Mr Gavin.

Now, it seems that everyone wants to distance themselves from both the process and its outcome — despite few being against both as they happened. As the old saying goes: Success has many fathers, but this failure in particular is an orphan.