Time for Enda Kenny to pause for breath and take a long hard look at where he is going

Unless Enda Kenny learns some critical lessons from the Seanad byelection debacle, his ambition of being the first Fine Gael leader ever to win a second consecutive term in office will inevitably turn to dust.

Kenny managed to turn the filling of a routine vacancy in the Seanad into an embarrassing episode that provided his critics with a potent weapon to try to tarnish the credibility of his entire record in office. Some Fine Gael TDs have begun to publicly question his judgment while many more are now privately expressing fears he has lost touch with his parliamentary party and relies far too heavily on a small coterie of advisers.

Albert Reynolds famously remarked on the day he lost office: “It’s amazing. You cross the big hurdles and when you get to the small ones you get tripped.” Kenny has undoubtedly delivered on the big issue his government was elected to deal with – the economy. But, like Reynolds and the peace process, that outstanding achievement won’t necessarily save him from political disaster if he continues to make small mistakes.

Since the beginning of the year, the Coalition has stumbled from one unforced error to another, culminating in a terrible performance by both Fine Gael and the Labour Party in the European and local elections. The election of a new Labour leader and the Cabinet reshuffle in July was supposed to mark the beginning of a new phase, but when the Dáil returned from its summer break it was back to bumbling incompetence in the handling of routine political business.

Everything about the selection of John McNulty from Donegal as the Fine Gael candidate to fill the Seanad vacancy created by the election of Deirdre Clune to the European Parliament in June was bizarre.

Nomination as mistake

For a start the Fine Gael national executive had suggested that the candidate should be one of a number of women who had contested the local elections in Dublin and had a chance of winning a Dáil seat at the next election. Instead, for some unknown reason, the Taoiseach picked John McNulty who had been put forward by the Donegal executive of the party. He was unsuccessful in the local elections and is not regarded as having a serious chance in the general election. The real mistake though was the nomination of McNulty to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art six days before the close of Seanad nominations to ensure his credentials to run on the Cultural and Educational Panel. It looked like a pure political stroke, and to make matters worse it appears it was actually unnecessary as he was already qualified to run on that panel.

The media naturally pounced on the manoeuvre, which should hardly have been a surprise. It became the political story of the week, forcing Kenny and Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys into excruciatingly implausible explanations for what had happened.

More seriously, the row removed another brick from the wall of the Coalition’s reputation on the issue of political reform. While commentators are often far more concerned than the public with political reform, the fact is the Coalition campaigned on the issue in the last election and made it an important feature of the programme for government.

The spectacle of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin taking the high moral ground over a minor political stroke is laughable but that doesn’t mitigate the damage suffered by Fine Gael, particularly in the light of the promise it made that things would be done differently. What is worrying for both Government parties is that just when the Coalition’s economic policies are beginning to bear tangible fruit, the public’s attention is again being distracted by another self-inflicted wound.

This is why Kenny needs to pause for breath and take a long, hard look at where he is going. Colleagues fear one of reasons so many mistakes have been made over the past year is that the Taoiseach’s punishing schedule is catching up with him.

Since he took office in March 2011, Kenny has been working every available hour and surviving on as little sleep as possible. For instance, on Tuesday he flew to New York to attend the United Nations general assembly and attend a dinner hosted by US president Barack Obama. The following morning he travelled on to Rhode Island to meet the governor of the state to discuss tourism investment opportunities in Ireland and he then opened a Famine memorial before flying back to Ireland through the night to be at the ploughing championships on Thursday. His work rate and his ability to cultivate political contacts in Europe and the United States has paid huge dividends for the country, but all that could count for naught if the political mistakes continue.

Time to listen

One of Kenny’s outstanding characteristics is stubbornness. That quality bolstered his resolution to defy the coterie of critics in the media and within Fine Gael who belittled him from the day he took over as leader of Fine Gael. At this stage, though, he needs to listen carefully to what people in his Cabinet and parliamentary party are saying.

The scathing criticism of the Taoiseach by John Deasy came as no surprise as the Waterford TD is a long-time critic. What is more important is that a significant number of the parliamentary party privately share Deasy's views. The McNulty affair could be a timely warning to Kenny that he needs to take stock and adopt a fresh approach for the remainder of his term of office.