INTERVIEW:Enda Kenny is staying in touch with the people he governs and their message to him is loud and clear: sort it out
TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny describes the last 10 weeks as “a whirlwind” in which he went from the closing stages of the general election and the change of government to a series of important meetings in capital cities that will have a critical bearing on Ireland’s future welfare.
Through it all he has maintained the upbeat, cheery manner that carried him through the general election campaign and despite the appalling problems facing the country he is full of hope for the future.
“The scale of what we face is unprecedented but that is also the challenge. While the challenge is enormous the opportunity to get so many things right is brilliant,” says Kenny in his first newspaper interview since becoming Taoiseach on March 9th.
“It has been like a whirlwind for the last eight or 10 weeks, from the closing stages of the election right through the change of government. I have been in Helsinki, in Berlin, in Washington, Brussels and London, so I have been moving all the time. I have been working 18- or 19-hour days. That is the challenge that I accepted and that is the challenge of politics and it is a brilliant opportunity.”
He walks to and from his apartment in Dublin city centre to the Taoiseach’s office every morning and evening, and he talks to the people he meets on the way. He says they have a simple message for him,
“Sort it out. No matter how difficult it is we want to be able to see the sunlight on the far shore.”
Kenny says people are yearning for leadership from a Government that will bring certainty to decisions and get on with the job of dealing with the crisis.
“They are concerned about their families and their children and the next generation. Despite the crippling economic burden that the people are carrying there is a real sense of courage and hope. I will lead that insofar as I can with a sense of decency and integrity and tell people the truth.”
He says that the first two months in government have been a learning curve for his Ministers, who have had to resist being “enveloped in the tornado that hits them when they walk into a Government department”. Ministers have been learning the hard way that they will be judged on how well they are able to resist going native in their departments. Instead of coming up with new spending plans, their success or failure will be judged by how successful they are in cutting spending.
“It takes a little while for people to really understand that Cabinet is about making decisions; it is not a talking shop,” says Kenny, who emphasises that it is the function of a politician to identify solutions and make decisions.
He says that trying to renegotiate the EU-IMF deal has not proved more difficult than he expected when in opposition, although he believes the EU seems better able to cope with making political decisions than monetary ones.
“People get very sensitive both inside the euro zone and outside it. While the ECB has given Ireland huge liquidity resources, and Trichet, as a friend of Ireland, has been very considerate, he doesn’t control the ECB in that the governors of the central banks make up their own minds.”
He says other EU states are becoming aware of how serious the new Irish Government is about making decisions that should have been made a number of years ago. “They understand the austerity and the challenge that Irish people are going through, and I hope they will say ‘we want to allow this country and its economy to get up from being crippled under the weight and the burden and move forward, pay its way and play its part, instead of giving it any kind of lethal injection’.”
Kenny says the comprehensive spending review will be completed by September and in the meantime the Government will unveil its jobs initiative next Tuesday to provide a confidence boost for the indigenous economy, which has very high savings ratios and low consumer demand, by contrast with the strong export sector.
Kenny will be in New York today to try to encourage investment in Ireland. “I met 2,000 people in Washington in March and the level of enthusiasm and commitment to this country is very strong and we are going to harness that. So my message to them in Wall Street and the business people I am going to meet is that Ireland is open for business. It has a new Government with a different set of priorities.
“We want to bring certainty and decisiveness to the Government position. The 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate remains. We want to build on the traditional links between Ireland and the States. We want to tell the American people and the Irish-American people that we wholeheartedly welcome the visit of President Obama here to Ireland.”
Kenny is keenly aware of the proximity of Wall Street to the site of the 2001 terrorist attack. “There were firemen, policemen and office workers from Ireland killed there,” he says.
The Taoiseach is confident on the security arrangements for Obama’s visit and that of Queen Elizabeth. “This is an occasion where the people of Ireland can turn out and give a royal welcome to her majesty and a real Irish céad míle fáilte to President Obama.”
He expresses delight that the Queen has accepted the invitation of President Mary McAleese to pay a State visit to this country. “I think the fact that she is going to the Garden of Remembrance and the War Memorial at Islandbridge is very significant for different reasons. It is fair to say that in respect of Islandbridge, people from Northern Ireland who have never been down to the Republic are coming down to see the Queen.
“It is the first visit of a reigning monarch in 100 years to this State. It is symbolic of two countries having normalised relations where the head of the royal family can visit our country and we can move on from all those divisions and dissent. We are now two mature countries facing together a challenging future.”
Kenny also emphasises that relations between the two governments are very strong. “I have met the prime minister on a number of occasions on visits to Brussels and I have been over to Downing Street. David Cameron has been very supportive of Ireland.”
Dealing with the controversy over judges’ pensions that followed his recent meeting with Chief Justice John Murray, the Taoiseach confirmed that the matter had been discussed.
“I don’t believe there is anything wrong with the chief justice of the day meeting, on an occasional basis, with the taoiseach of the day to discuss the courts over which the chief justice has a responsibility. In fact we discussed the question of an appeals court and we discussed how it now takes 37½ months to get to a hearing of the Supreme Court.”
Kenny said they also discussed changes to the form and the presentation of the judiciary in court. “The Chief Justice himself has been following through changes to gowns and all that sort of material, which I think would be far more appropriate in modern circumstances than what has been there for centuries.”
On the issue of judges’ pensions, he said. “I can confirm for you that the Chief Justice did not refer to his own pension situation; he never mentioned it. He did give a couple of examples of a general nature of what the implications are. That was for my information but my response was very clear.”
Asked what that response was, Kenny said it was “absolutely not” to the prospect of any exemption of judges from the pension arrangements contained in the last budget.
The Taoiseach added that the Government was committed to a referendum to allow judges’ pay to be cut in line with other public servants and also to one on the abolition of the Seanad.
However, neither issue is likely to be dealt with this year, with the priority being the referendums on giving Oireachtas committees the power to make findings of fact and protection for whistleblowers, which it is hoped to hold on the same day as the presidential election in November.
“The two priorities for the Government are to give the Oireachtas teeth and compellability in dealing with questions of fact about the banks, because I have no intention of setting up a toothless committee that gives the impression of doing something when in fact it can’t.
“The advice given to the Government was very clear on the limited powers and capability of parliament at the moment and you have got to change that.”
Stephen Collins is Political Editor