LABOUR BACKBENCHERS last night expressed “fury” after Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil he would “make an honest leader of Deputy Eamon Gilmore”.

Mr Kenny’s tongue-in-cheek response to a question from Socialist TD Joe Higgins provoked an angry response from many first-time Labour TDs and Senators at their parliamentary party meeting in Leinster House last night.

“Labour backbenchers are furious at the lack of collegiality. I don’t think he [Mr Kenny] intended it but it came out all wrong. It sends out all the wrong signals at a time when we are taking it in the neck on so many fronts,” one Labour source said.

However, senior party sources put the controversy down to “naivety and nervousness” on the part of younger TDs and Senators who were facing into their first budget.

They conceded that Mr Kenny’s comments would make life more difficult for Labour.

Labour’s parliamentary party met between noon and 1.15pm yesterday, and the meeting resumed at 6.15pm. Mr Kenny had earlier told the Dáil the Labour Party programme, prior to the general election, “made a very clear reference to the issue of childcare”. However, a programme of government between Fine Gael and Labour had been agreed subsequently.

He told Mr Higgins that although Labour’s programme was very clear prior to the election, “pre-election promises made by Labour were different from the programme for government”.

Minister for Jobs and Enterprise Richard Bruton played down the controversy when he appeared on Tonight with Vincent Browne on TV3. Mr Bruton said he had not been in the Dáil chamber when Mr Kenny made his remark, but described it as a “side comment”.

He said Mr Gilmore was “a real bonus to the Cabinet and the way it works”. The Cabinet was working as a team, he added.