ANALYSIS:The ferocity of the language Déirdre de Búrca used to criticise John Gormley surprised her former party colleagues
THE RESIGNATION of Déirdre de Búrca from the Seanad and from the Green Party yesterday was never going to have the same impact as George Lee’s sensational exit earlier this week.
But her parting shot was as pointed and critical as Lee’s and served to once more expose to public scrutiny the standing of the Greens in the coalition Government, with a series of uncomfortable questions.
Yesterday, her former colleagues contended de Búrca’s departure had been primarily due to personal reasons, namely her disappointment at not being appointed to the cabinet of the new Irish commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, named two days previously.
Former leader Trevor Sargent said both party leader John Gormley and Taoiseach Brian Cowen had supported her bid for the job, but that the office of a European commissioner is an independent one and it was ultimately Geoghegan-Quinn’s decision alone. De Búrca was not viewed as a natural fit for the innovation brief, which is highly technical. There were suggestions yesterday that another position in Luxembourg may have been suggested.
However, it is clear that this wasn’t the sole reason, that there were other factors at play to cause her growing “discomfort” with the Greens.
“As a party, we seem to have been paralysed by the electorate’s rejection of many of our candidates in the elections last June. Any suggestion that we challenge Fianna Fáil seems to bring up a great fear in us that we will have to leave government. In fact staying in government has become an end in itself,” she wrote in her statement, a withering put-down of her former colleagues.
Fianna Fáil, she said, was allowed to run rings around the Greens. The larger party stonewalled, backtracked and ignored members’ input, and reneged on key agreements, she said.
The most stinging criticism is reserved for leader John Gormley, whom she accused of being unwilling and unable to stand up to Fianna Fáil.
“The effect of this unwillingness to act is that the Green Party has been slowly haemorrhaging support,” she contends.
Her relationship with Gormley has deteriorated in the past year. However, the ferocity of the language against him took her eight parliamentary party colleagues by surprise.
A senator seeking a profile usually searches for a speciality. Boyle majored on finance and had a high media profile. De Búrca was more a generalist and never had the same national profile as her colleague. She spoke on a wide range of issues but was seen as strongest on Europe, which doesn’t have the same hold on the public imagination. She also led the party’s campaigns for the Lisbon referendum last year.
The party now concedes it was a mistake to accommodate her decision to run in Dublin rather than the East constituency in last year’s European elections. She would not have come close to challenging in East, but it would have helped in her Wicklow constituency. As it was, her move to Dublin was portrayed by Wicklow rivals as a defection.
In the event, her performance was disappointing, being outpolled by former Green Patricia McKenna and losing her deposit to boot. Some trace the bulk of her unhappiness to that event.
One Green parliamentarian yesterday expressed bemusement that she had not expressed such trenchant views at any party meetings and had always sided strongly with the leadership during any crisis of confidence.
For example, she voted in favour of Nama and the revised programme for Government when both were put to the membership last autumn.
One senior source said yesterday: “Some of the stronger criticisms in the statement, I have not heard them from Déirdre before.”
There was puzzlement too about her reference to the report on the Dublin Docklands Development Authority by its new chairman, Prof Niamh Brennan.
It has been presented to Gormley but not yet made public. Yesterday, de Búrca said she lacked the confidence that Gormley would publish it.
Sources said it was premature of her, given that Gormley has just received the report. They said she might have been better referring to the recent Green capitulation on a banking inquiry.
Yesterday a succession of party spokespeople gave examples of how in Coalition, the tail had wagged the dog: the renewed programme, “smart jobs”, civil partnerships, the carbon levy, an elected lord mayor for Dublin.
Gormley said neither her departure nor the statement would have any implication for the party or his leadership. Speaking to The Irish Times, he specifically rejected the allegations she made against them saying they were “inaccurate and wholly without foundation”.
“My parliamentary colleagues also gave me their complete and unqualified support today,” he said.
De Búrca’s parting shot never had the potential to hole the Greens beneath the water line. But it puts yet another small question mark over the party’s Coalition project and whether the Government can last its full term.
