Commission portfolio more important than who fills it - Rabbitte

The portfolio Ireland is given in the next European Commission could well decide which person is selected to fill it, Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has said.

“I think what’s important is that we get a good portfolio and that whoever is doing it, is capable of doing a good job - the portfolio might well decide the candidate...what’s important is that we get in early and that we get a good portfolio,” he said.

Outgoing Labour leader Eamon Gilmore was last week linked with taking the Irish seat on the commissionn, a role many had believed would be taken by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, a Fine Gael TD.

Asked if proposing Mr Gilmore for Ireland’s seat could lead to tensions with Fine Gael, Mr Rabbitte said the portfolio that Ireland gets was more important than the person.

“I sit beside Phil Hogan at the Cabinet and we talk about this now and again I honestly think Phil Hogan doesn’t know anymore than I do but it’s certainly gathered some momentum that Phil Hogan will be the man,” he told The Irish Times.

"Eamon Gilmore, on the other hand, is the foreign affairs minister and...supervised Ireland's [EU]presidency and he has had regular interaction with his colleagues across Europe and in the commission and nobody has in any way questioned his competence to do the job."

Mr Rabbitte also said Fine Gael and Labour will need to renegotiate the programme for government after the election of Mr Gilmore’s successor as Labour leader to address new problems which have arisen since 2011.

Mr Rabbitte, a former Labour leader, said he believed that there was a recognition of the need for such a move not just among the Labour Party but also among members of Fine Gael, which had also received a stern rebuke from the electorate in last month’s local election, he said.

“ I would have thought after the new Labour leader is elected, people from the two parties will have to sit down and look at the agenda for the remainder of the government because the programme for the government was negotiated at the nadir of our fortunes in that dreadful winter of 2011,” he said.

“The country was confronted with an existential crisis at that time and therefore the programme for government reflects that and that is now over which is not to say we are over the woods but the existential challenge is over but there are now new issues being thrown up in the political agenda.”

Mr Rabbitte noted the growing housing crisis in Dublin as an issue that needed to be addressed, and said he believed that Fine Gael, as much as Labour, recognised the need to take cognisance of these new issues.

“We may not be ad idem on what ought to constitute the eight or 10 points in this context but there is an acknowledgement between both parties that there is a need to renew the programme because if you go down through the items and tick them, they have been 95 per cent dealt with.”