Kenny saves himself from political limbo

ANALYSIS:Enda Kenny's low-key approach appears to be winning over the voters

AT THE conclusion of Fine Gael's news conference on its election manifesto yesterday, party leader Enda Kenny was asked for his thoughts on the previous night's leaders' debate on RTÉ One's The Frontline.

Kenny could have indulged himself a little. After all, the fact that he had managed to hold his own in the face of an expected onslaught from his rivals was hailed by his party as a triumph of Obamaesque proportions.

Instead, Kenny was relatively philosophical and low-key in framing his response. He began by comparing televised debates to the nature of the canvass in the past – rival candidates standing up on soapboxes outside churches, catching the congregations as they came out from Mass.

“If you didn’t do them you think you miss something critical. But in all the church gates I did I don’t think I converted a single soul,” he said. His theory that televised debates are overhyped and pro-forma – and ultimately make less impact than portrayed – may have extended to his party’s much-delayed general election manifesto, published yesterday.

There was a time when the release of a party manifesto during a general election campaign was the political equivalent of the Late LateChristmas toy show. The apogee was in 1977 when Fianna Fáil employed US-style razzmatazz to launch a manifesto – promising the abolition of rates and car tax, massive job creation in the public sector, a new ministry for economic planning and development – that electrified the campaign and helped sweep Fianna Fáil to a landslide.

By contrast yesterday, while his party colleagues were buoyant and cock-a-hoop following the TV debate, Kenny’s launch of the manifesto was an understated, almost anti-climactic, affair. That may be partly attributed to the prevailing sober atmosphere but also to the fact that the 80-page document contains no new policy initiative that has not been previously published by the party.

Kenny did say that the policy proposals on Irish in the plan – written wholly as Gaeilge – contained some new elements, particularly his wholehearted commitment to the language. However, a reading of the section showed it is a word-for-word reproduction of the party’s Irish-language policy, published earlier this month. This week, Kenny has come in for sustained criticism from Irish-language advocates for backing a plan to end compulsory Irish for the Leaving Certificate.

In precis, the document is an abridged version of Fine Gael’s major policy papers covering 21 areas from agriculture to transport. It also includes the party’s five-point plan for recovery, which it unveiled at the outset of the campaign. They are growth and jobs, deficit reduction, smaller government, political reform and universal health insurance. He also said it would set out the agenda for a Fine Gael government.

“I believe after fighting 12 elections this is the best plan that any party has ever had. The team of people that Fine Gael has is the best. They are competent professional and efficient people,” was Kenny’s summation.

A key member of the team, Michael Noonan, took most of the questions on a core section of the manifesto: its chapter on banking and debt distress. The principal proposal is to renegotiate the EU-IMF deal, and provide for burden-sharing by bondholders as well as a lowering of the EU interest rate. Noonan argued the status quo was not sustainable. His key point was: “Unless the bailout package is made more affordable, there is a high risk, without anybody taking a policy decision, a bank will run into a default position.”

The document contains other major Fine Gael policies, including its proposals to replace the HSE with universal healthcare insurance, its €7 billion New Era plan it claims can create 100,000 jobs, and its plan to shed 30,000 jobs in the public sector.

Richard Bruton said that plan would involve no more than 18,000 voluntary redundancies and said the plan’s aim of cutting costs by 10 per cent was a “must achieve” and could be implemented without cutting frontline services.

There were two moments of dispute with other parties. Kenny was dismissive of Fianna Fáil plans to parachute non-political experts into cabinet as ministers. “One essential fundamental for me is that if people are being asked to accept responsibility in politics, in my view they have to be elected.” He also criticised Labour for extending the timeframe by two years to reduce the national deficit to 3 per cent of national income. “Irish people do not want to think there is an interminable night in front of them in relation to this burden,” he said.

Kenny may not have converted many souls in the TV debate on Monday night but he certainly saved his own from being cast into political limbo, which some argued happened to him in the same position four years ago.

Of the five leaders who lined up in the studio, he had most to lose.

There were three major political hurdles he had to leap in the 90 minutes that followed. Firstly, he had refused the invitation to appear in the leaders' debate on TV3 the previous week, allowing Micheál Martin and Eamon Gilmore to slug it out among themselves. That perpetuated a perception that has had wide currency in this election campaign that Fine Gael had been "hiding" Kenny away. He can appear wooden in public and has struggled in the past with supplemental questions or ones that require detailed and specific knowledge. The folk memory has also been there of his poorish performance against Bertie Ahern in the debate preceding the 2007 general election. The third factor was Fine Gael's very strong position with 10 days to polling day. The opinion polls – including The Irish Times' polls of constituencies – have been trending heavily towards Fine Gael, bringing the party very close to a seat haul that could see it forming a government (albeit minority) on its own. With Fianna Fáil and Labour failing to reverse slides in support, it was expected both would ratchet up the confrontational prose when engaging with Kenny in the debate.

It did not happen. The Frontlineformat where questions were put by audience members did not lend itself to that type of debate. The fact there were five leaders resulted in a constant shift of focus, and it was impossible for any leader to press a rival on an alleged weakness for more than a few seconds. In the event, there was no clear winner. The two leaders who performed worst in 2007 – Kenny and Gerry Adams – acquitted themselves very well. Adams ignored what others were saying to him and addressed the audience directly. Martin was the most assertive but came under enormous pressure when the HSE was criticised. John Gormley succeeded in presenting his party as more than an adjunct to Fianna Fáil and made the surprising admission that the HSE was a monstrosity.

The most memorable moments were the preconceived soundbites: Martin was reminded he was a minister for 14 years by both Kenny, who described him as Rip Van Winkle, and by Gilmore, who dubbed him the Great Pretender. Gilmore, a reflector of public anger, found it difficult to find the right pitch for his message.

Votes not souls are the business of politics and Kenny’s hold-your-own performance this week seems to have been enough to convince the many converts his party has attracted.

Harry McGee is a political correspondent of The Irish Times