MEP blames leadership for handling of criticism

LABOUR MEP Nessa Childers has condemned a “failure of leadership” in the party over the handling of her outspoken criticism of a senior civil servant’s nomination to a top European job.

Ms Childers spoke yesterday of “very, very trenchant” and “in some cases highly aggressive” calls she received after speaking publicly two weeks ago about her dissatisfaction with the nomination of the Department of Finance’s secretary general Kevin Cardiff to the European Court of Auditors.

Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa warned Ms Childers she could face expulsion from the party if she continued to voice her opposition; separately Labour’s director of communications Dermot O’Gara contacted Ms Childers and advised her not to pursue the issue in the media.

Yesterday Ms Childers said she “found it quite distressing” that “no one like Eamon Gilmore or even an adviser picked up the phone to talk to me during this period to say, ‘Nessa are you okay?’

“I felt there was a failure of leadership and somebody at the top picking up the phone and talking to me and saying ‘what is happening, what happened to you?’,” she said.

After Ms Childers last week spoke publicly about the phone calls, Tánaiste and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore told reporters he had no idea about anyone warning the MEP not to speak to the media and that it was news to him.

Ms Childers told the Marian Finucane Showon RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday that there had been articles "full of people saying they didn't know it was true or it was news to them".

There was a “failure of communication” as was “quite obvious” because the issue had been on the news.

There was a “great deal of stress in the party” over “dreadful” decisions that it had to make in Government and that was “where leadership comes in”, she said. She did not think there should be “this kind of heat” in organisations as they “become dysfunctional eventually”.

The phone calls to her about Mr Cardiff had been a “much bigger issue” than those who made them, she said. “The issue is about the interference in my work as an MEP, in my mandate,” which was separate to the Government.

Ms Childers was still not sure why she was told to be quiet and “can only guess that the situation was quite serious”.

It was the fear a law suit for loss of income rather than the threat of expulsion from the Labour Party that made her pull out of an interview on RTÉ television on the Cardiff issue. “I imagine it is very improbable looking at it now,” she said yesterday.

Ms Childers had been trying to communicate her reservations about the nomination for a number of weeks but felt people in the party were not listening.

Two weeks ago Ms Childers told reporters that she had been concerned about the nomination even before the department’s €3.6 billion accounting blunder.

Ms Childers has made a complaint to the party about the contacts with her. A Labour spokesman said yesterday it was an “internal matter”.