TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny told his Ministers at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting to be more careful about what they said in public on the State’s financial position.
His comments came in the wake of Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar’s suggestion that Ireland might need a second EU-IMF bailout. It is understood Mr Varadkar apologised to colleagues during the meeting for the confusion he had caused which saw the Taoiseach and other Ministers having to give interviews to clarify the Government’s position.
In the Dáil yesterday the Taoiseach was asked by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin if he had spoken to his Ministers and explained to them why “solo runs” were damaging to the country.
“Yes, of course I can confirm that I have spoken to all of the Ministers about the importance of this matter,” said Mr Kenny. “We have taken decisions in respect of a national economic stimulus and we are now carrying out a detailed analysis of how public moneys are spent so that we can prioritise what we can do within the constraints of the IMF-EU deal for the 2012 budget,” he said..
Mr Martin said that over the past three weeks the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, have had to deal with the fallout from comments made by a number of Ministers who got mixed up, misspoke, were taken out of context or simply got it wrong. “I know the Taoiseach’s preferred approach to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, and maybe other Ministers, might be simply to ignore what he says.
“However, an analysis done this afternoon shows that his Sunday interview has been covered by more than 2,200 media outlets around the world so far.”
He said the biggest problem with what Mr Varadkar had said was that many people were stating openly that the Minister was telling the truth and that the Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance were denying it because they must.
The Taoiseach described the Fianna Fáil leader’s comments as “quite pathetic”, adding that he knew the truth about the legacy of the previous government.