FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has condemned the Cabinet reshuffle as a “mishmash” and said that while 430,000 people were unemployed “not a single Minister has lost a job here despite the fact that these were the drivers of our economy on to the rocks over the last number of years”.
He told Taoiseach Brian Cowen: “We have a line-up of Ministers who have failed in their departments, some of whom have become a byword for inaction and incompetence.
“You have made some changes, with the Tánaiste shifting downwards to the Department of Education and the Minister for Social and Family Affairs moving somewhere else . . . and the former minister for education moving closer to yourself.”
His party colleagues applauded him at the end of his 15-minute Dáil speech on the reshuffle, while the Government benches sat quietly during his contribution.
He said “this is undoubtedly the worst Government in the history of the State” which the Taoiseach wanted to keep virtually intact. Its main figures have been involved in crashing the Irish economy on to the rocks in the last number of years and the people who are confirmed in their jobs today were at the helm when they ignored all warnings given by independent commentators and by political commentators about the running of the economy and their failure to effect that.
“It is the same group of Ministers who have presided over the country’s slide into deep recession.”
Like other party leaders Mr Kenny was critical of the retention of Mary Harney as Minister for Health. He said “you have a dysfunctional health system where people are actually afraid to go to the hospitals that are supposed to look after them. This kind of situation is one where warning signs went unheeded.”
He said Ms Harney continued in her job when she was a Minister with a “proven rigidity in terms of approach at a time when a radical change was needed to shift emphasis and effect and impact in the Department of Health”.
Mr Kenny believed that Mr Cowen had retreated “from the challenge of leadership that fell upon your shoulders when you could have been so courageous, when you could have taken a different approach when you could really have had a shuffle of your Cabinet that would bring some semblance of life to a jaded Cabinet . . . fatigued and flattened, without ideas, without energy, without ideals and without commitment”.
He added that “it was a personal honour for those elevated to Cabinet or to Minister of State ranks but “for this Cabinet your time is doomed, what should be happening here is you should show the courage, you should go up to the Park yourself and say ‘I’m dissolving this Dáil, let the people have their say let them pass their mandate’. ”
He described the departmental changes as a “weird” version of “happy families” and said that “at the end of this pathetic game of happy families your front bench is an indictment of your judgment, your courage and your vision”.
Mr Kenny concluded: “I’m warning you your time is nigh. The people are waiting, the clock is ticking and this sticking plaster of putting two new Ministers in Cabinet for a short time will not work.
“The people know it will not work and they’ll wait for you with a vengeance when that time comes.”
