Now Enda needs to appoint a shepherd

Enda was the hero of the hour at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday for his electrifying speech to the Magdalene women in the Dáil the night before.

But the meeting went on for more than 2½ hours, so the moment passed.

Recent opinion polls have further unsettled his backbenchers – many already disgruntled about how little input they have in Government decisions and how ideas are largely ignored by their rarified colleagues in ministerial jobs.

Perhaps to take the edge off the complaints and head off some of the criticism to come, the Taoiseach revisited that old chestnut of improving communications.

The blame is always landed on “communications” when things aren’t going well for a party. And the finger, as far as the politicians are concerned, is always points squarely in the direction of unelected but powerful handlers.

The party has to make a better job of getting out its message, said the Taoiseach. Some Ministers are better than others at doing this. Also, better lines of communication must be established between backbenchers and Ministers.

Whereupon Enda announced that he is going to appoint “a political director”.

This appointment – “It sounded like he was going to do it soon and he gave the impression that he had someone in mind,” said a backbencher – has been the subject of huge speculation and some worry in the party.

Some are wondering if this director will be a member of the parliamentary party, or an outsider to add to the layer of advisers cushioning the leadership.

“He has a big backbench party now and has to try and manage them,” a former FG adviser reckons. “It’ll probably be somebody like Labour’s David Leach.”

Leach is part of Labour’s blessed trinity, the other two being party leader Eamon Gilmore and his chef de cabinet, Mark Garrett.

That sort of scenario wouldn’t please the FG backbenchers, who feel that the unelected advisers have too much influence over their leader and too much power over them.

But it’s looking like Enda’s choice will be handed a brown coat and stick and told to tidy his jumpy backbenchers into a manageable herd. Including, one assumes, that impatient and ambitious group of young, male, first-time Deputies who continue to meet off campus and study their progress in Government.