FINE GAEL frontbencher Leo Varadkar has described Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s Cabinet reshuffle as the worst since that of former taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald in 1986.
In a sharply worded speech during the Dáil debate on the reshuffle, he told Mr Cowen: “You’re no Seán Lemass. You’re no Jack Lynch and you’re no John Bruton. You’re a Garret FitzGerald. You’ve tripled the national debt, you’ve effectively destroyed the country and now you’ve a dirty, wasteful, botch job of a Cabinet reshuffle.”
The party’s enterprise, trade and innovation spokesman also excoriated the Green Party.
“On Planet Bertie it was jobs for the boys. On Planet Gormley it’s jobs for the Greens. The Greens campaigned in 2007 saying that Green politics was clean politics. It’s clear to me that Green politics is just crony politics.
“Five out of six of their TDs have held ministerial office. When one of their senators didn’t get a job in Europe, she went off in a huff. Several of their defeated candidates have been appointed to State boards without any scrutiny whatsoever and it seems the only person who isn’t fit for office in the Greens is Paul Gogarty and we yet don’t know what the reason is for that.”
The Dublin West TD also warned the division of State training agency Fás among three Government departments – Social Protection, Education and Skills and Enterprise, Trade and Innovation would create “a corporate governance nightmare”, with all three Ministers passing responsibility.
Fás was the “most troubled agency in this country that needs a Minister to grab hold of it and fix it”, but “there will be no oversight. Each of the Ministers will pass the buck among each other”.
If the agency was not broken up into three separate agencies, “I think it’s going to be a real mess and a big mistake”. He told Mr Cowen that “you don’t even understand what public sector reform is about if you think that nonsensical triangular arrangement is going to be successful”.
He also described the new Department of Community, Equality and the Gaeltacht as "very strange" and said the Taoiseach should call it the department of the miscellaneous. He described Mr Cowen's reshuffle as "the last thing you do. So enjoy writing your boring articles in The Irish Timesin a few years' time."
