Ah, for the love of God.

This is fantastic news. Already people who are too close to the system think it was about a front bench position. I don’t believe that. He simply wanted to be influential – to make a difference.

The fact that he was more influential as a journalist than as a politician says bucket loads about the NIMBY, pothole fixing, hospital at every gap in the ditch, parish crap that Irish politics is. And the citizens of this country vote for that crap in election after election.

Maybe 9 months isn’t long enough to make a difference, but it should be long enough to make your voice heard and try and be an influence.

Hopefully he has done politics in this country a service today. But I doubt it.

Dan @1 is that what’s known as taking the ‘pith’…? Proving if proof were necessary that brevity is indeed the soul of wit…Andrew…spelling darling!

This is a bad day for Enda Kenny to squander such a resource as George Lee that the people had faith in. I think the electorate have been treated very badly by Enda’s attempt to bring a well known star personality into the party knowing that George Lee left his job in RTE to affect change in politics and was then bound and gagged in Fine Gael.

I was not going to vote FF in the next election but now I dont know who to vote for. Fine Gael need to replace Enda Kenny fast.

Is this a sneak preview of the potential problems of those elected though a list system if one is introduced with the purpose of getting “national” politicans with particular expertise into the Dáil?

It is utterly inconceivable George Lee didn’t take the time to discuss joining Fine Gael with party members. All he had to do was ask and he’d have been told what he faced.

Nor is it possible he thought he could change the system in 9 months or that he wouldn’t have understood the scale of force that would oppose him from within Fine Gael and elsewhere. He’s worked in RTE so he knows the mindset of places like that. Leinster House is probably the most insular ineffective civil service function in the entire country. He knew this.

The fact he threw his toys out of the pram so soon doesn’t reflect too well on his maturity.

On the other side, the fact Enda Kenny claims he will provide a team in government of talent has been shown to be untrue. George Lee should have been on the front bench as Enterprise and Employment spokesperson from day one.

So what if he outshone other people – I thought Kenny wanted the best.

People forget that Enda Kenny is as much a product of inbred backwoods politics as Brian Cowen is. Enda Kenny did not get elected to the Dail due to talent but because of a name.

He deserves much credit for the revival of Fine Gael but he can’t coast on that forever.

Internal Fine Gael politics is as stultifyingly dead-hand as Fianna Fáil’s but just in a different way. The damage done to the party mindset after 25 years in opposition is just as corrosive as the damage 25 years in government has been to Fianna Fáil.

FG is on the up because FF is on the way down, not because of anything FG has done. It’s the massive mistakes of FF that have turned people to FG out of desperation. FG backroom people refuse to face up to that. The party powerbrokers refuse to accept the fact the party needs to step up its game radically and start setting out the precise specifics of what it wants to do in power and how it will do it – i.e., the first day, week, month, year: what milestones will be passed.

I mean, who can name any Fine Gael policies on anything? Reams of policies and the public don’t know any of them. No connection or effort to connect made at all.

Also, with regard to the issues FG can actually change, the record is utterly pathetic. Still no action to make FG public reps provide and publish receipts for what they claim, still FG reps taking pensions on top of income, still a headquarters where time has stood still since about 1997.

I mean, what was the prep work for Kenny before he went on the Late Late and why does he keep repeating these mistakes. It can’t possibly be that the media team do not sit him down and watch a repeat and point out every single mistake he’s made.

More importantly, where is the influence of his wife? She is a media savy professional – just like Sarah Brown – and while Sarah Brown can only do so much you can see a real change in perception on issues where she has an involvement. Why is Fionnuala Kenny not doing the same?

Also, don’t underestimate how much of an academic Richard Bruton is. He can’t conceive of the level of change that needs to take place in how politics is done in Ireland. Fine Gael can spend hour after hour arguing over some point of order nonsense and completely missing the point of the debate.

All is not well in FG and Lee might have done the party a favour to get its head out of its ass where its been since about 1997, or he might have inflicted a mortal wound.

Time for Fine Gael to get the head-shrinks in to change the attitude from doom and gloom opposing everything to setting out a bright future under the next FG government – if sports people can change their attitude to end a losing streak why can’t politicians?

As for George, so much you could have done for your constituents and for your country, why did you walk away so easily without what seems as even a determined fight? Your words this evening, “they came looking for me”. So I guess because of that, they should have given you the opportunity you deserved. Hmmm, a little of the spoilt child syndrome. Yes they failed badly for not using your knowledge and skills, but doesnt sound as you fought very hard to to be heard, or perhaps there is something you have not shared with us yet. Could this be next Christmas’s autobiography?

George Lee is far too honest for a place like Dail Eireann. He has far too much integrity, he is too sincere. He has exposed Dail Eireann for what it really is: a sham and a charade. In saying no he has done us all a great service.

George Lee, does he know where he is going? Like his old partner Charlie Bird I presume he is heading back to the cosy comfort of the mother ship out in Montrose where he can make his programmes rather than try and influence policies .
Fine Gael will have to try and get candidates who really want to stand for them.

Well done to GL for not selling his soul to toe the party line. If every politician stuck to their principles instead of accepting the status quo in exchange for the promise of a front bench position & a pension we might actually see some change.

Desmond – nail on the head.

A total failure of vision by Kenny. The problem with a lot of front benchers is that they have no career to speak of outside of politics.

They get a guy with professional skills and to put manners on him they leave him stewing on the backbenches, don’t give a specific brief and areas to research and investigate.

It is a shocking waste of an immediately identifiable and fluent communicator. While you can argue about truculence, he had and has a professional life, he offered himself, he wasn’t used and he went away.

Kenny didn’t do much with Brody Sweeney either. Sweeney could have been brough into the Senate and wasn’t.

Just for the record on Big Jim Larkin, I had it a bit wrong above. He was elected in 1927 in a General Election but never got to take up his seat because he was declared bankrupt when he would not pay a libel award against him. He then ran for the bye election that was caused by his own disqualification but failed to be elected. He ran again in 1929, 1932 and was elected in 1937, lost his seat in 1938, was elected for Labour in 1943 and 1944.