18  February 2016
2016 ELECTION
E
nda Kenny has defied those detrac-
tors who have claimed for many years
that he is not up to the job of leading
the country. Or has he? His supporters
claim that he has brought the country,
and the economy, from the brink of complete
meltdown to steady recovery and is now set to
be the first Fine Gael leader to claim the title of
Taoiseach in successive elections. Others say
that timing and luck have played a huge part in
his belated success after more than 40 years in
the Dáil and that victory in this month’s poll is
by no means certain.
Over the past five years, Kenny has displayed
many of the characteristics that marked the
career of his long-term adversary, Bertie Ahern,
including the ability to shake off, or at least
postpone, controversies that would have
caused terminal damage to other party
leaders.
His claim to have secured a significant debt
write-down from his EU partners in June 2012
proved to be untrue. His siding with the ECB and
the Bundesbank against the struggling Greek
people who put the radical leftists of Syriza into
power was self-serving and opportunist and
arguably undermined any prospect of Ireland
getting some early relief on its enormous legacy
of banking debt.
His instruction to the Secretary General of the
Department of Justice, Brian Purcell, to make a
late-night visit to the Garda Commissioner,
Martin Callinan, leading to the resignation of
both senior public servants and of his own long
-time supporter, Alan Shatter, in mid-2014, is
all a fog of obfuscation.
Similarly, the manner in which the Commis-
sion of Inquiry he announced to examine the
purchase of Siteserv by long-time party sup-
porter, Denis O’Brien, and other IBRC sales in
mid-2015, was allowed to run into the sand due
to its restricted powers and inadequate terms
of reference bears all the finger prints of his
senior handlers.
His outrageous and inaccurate remarks from
Davos to Madrid to Paris on Ireland’s crisis and
his government’s role in recovery have con-
firmed that he has not lost the habit of
appearing the clown, unintentionally, at the
most unexpected moments.
Enda Kenny also merits opprobrium for his
broken promise to fix the health system, the
failure to deal with a deepening housing crisis
and the widening of the income divide between
the richest and most vulnerable during these
past few years.
Yet the stars, and international factors,
including a strong dollar and sterling, unex
-
pected multi-national tax payments and the
dramatic oil-price collapse have combined to
see Kenny emerge as the architect of the fast-
est-growing economy in Europe and the
cheerful bestower of a fistful of promises to
simultaneously cut taxes, improve public ser-
vices and recruit thousands of nurses, teachers
and gardaí.
Kenny has luck on his side. He was fortunate
to lose the leadership contest against Michael
Noonan after John Bruton lost the 1997 general
election to Ahern and before the 2002 poll when
the Fine Gael vote imploded. Kenny survived
with his lowest ever first preference vote in
Mayo and Noonan resigned. The Mayo TD took
over the party in June 2002 after a battle with
Richard Bruton. Kenny was helped by transfers
from his soon-to-be key ally, Phil Hogan, in the
run-off and after the elimination of Jim
Mitchell.
He faced into the 2007 general election as the
blitz of his bizarre financial arrangements
threatened to take out Ahern but failed to con-
vince voters that he could do better than Fianna
Fáil in managing a faltering economy. Once
again, luck was on Kenny’s side as Brian Cowen
replaced Ahern a year later and was engulfed
by the banking and property collapse.
In 2011, after two failed heaves against him,
the Fine Gael leader hauled his party to an his-
toric victory and into government with a
resurgent Labour Party, after the Fianna Fáil/
Green administration collapsed in acrimony
and the people gave it an unprecedented bat-
tering in the February election.
There is no doubt that he has rid himself of
the ‘Bertie lite’ tag that dogged him for years,
although his closest aides still do not trust him
enough to let him out on his own too often.
Kenny maintains a quirky, hail-fellow-well-
met style that makes him seem like a country
bumpkin but disguises a more ruthless political
streak and shrewdness..
In mid-2014, Kenny publicly distanced his
Enda Kenny:
not so lite now
Luck, charm, good handlers and a ruthless streak
make him the man to beat in election 2016
by Frank Connolly
He merits opprobrium for his broken
promise to fix the health system, the failure
to deal with a deepening housing crisis and
the widening of the income divide between
the richest and most vulnerable during
these past few years
  February 2016 19
party from its key strategist, and his close
friend, Frank Flannery who was embroiled in a
financial scandal which erupted after details
emerged of enormous salaries and other pay-
ments involving the Rehab charity and its senior
executives. Flannery who had left the charity
some years previously was being well paid for
consultancy work which involved lobbying his
colleagues in Fine Gael. He had a pass for Lein-
ster House and free parking which the public
was informed was being removed. It was a
humiliating experience for the suave PR man
and no doubt difficult for Kenny.
A few weeks later the pair sat down for lunch
in Dobbins restaurant near the Dáil along with
another old friend and party elder, the late Bill
O’ Herlihy. Kenny expressed a degree of regret
that Flannery had been shafted and was sorry
that he had to withdraw his valuable Dáil pass.
“Don’t worry about that, Enda”, commiser-
ated Flannery, or words to that effect, as he
pulled the pass from his jacket pocket, to laugh-
ter all round. Kenny never forgets his friends
even when the going gets tough.
Kenny was gifted a Dáil seat for Mayo west in
November 1975 after the premature death of his
father, Henry, from cancer. The young teacher
was a newly appointed principal at Knockroos-
key primary school near Westport and followed
in his father’s footballing steps, playing for
local club Islandeady. In September 1975, he
played for the club, alongside his younger
brother Kieran, in a county intermediate final
against Ballinrobe. His team was accused of
“punch and crunch tactics” by the opposition
and the local media. However the two Kenny
boys were absolved of any misbehaviour. As in
his political life, Kenny surrounded himself with
a few hard men who have taken the hit for him
when the occasion requires.
At the 50th birthday celebration for one his of
most loyal, and aggressive, allies, Kilkenny TD
Phil Hogan in July 2010 in Bennettsbridge,
Kenny made reference in his speech to another
former teammate, Michael Lowry. The Tipperary
TD and former cabinet colleague left the party
when he was told he could not stand on its
ticket for the 1997 election. This followed rev-
elations in the McCracken tribunal that he had
received enormous sums, and an extension to
his home, from retailer, Ben Dunne. Despite
ongoing revelations in the Moriarty tribunal
about Lowry’s receipt of huge monies from
Denis O’Brien for whom he helped acquire the
lucrative second mobile-phone licence from the
State in 1995, Kenny referred to the disgraced
TD on no less than three occasions during the
function for Hogan.
“Is that an application form I see in your top
pocket?”, he joked as the 150 guests fell about
the place.
As Taoiseach he shared the stand in May
2012 at the opening of the New York stock
exchange with billionaire O’Brien who retains
an unhealthy influence on politics through his
wealth and control of a range of media organi-
sations. Over the course of the long-running
controversy following the publication of the
damning Moriarty report earlier that year,
Kenny never forgets
his friends even when
the going gets tough
20  February 2016
2016 ELECTION
Kenny never criticised O’Brien nor withdrawn
his Dáil description of Lowry as “a man of integ-
rity”. In the early days of the current campaign
it took several interviews before he ruled out
any post-election deal with Lowry; or “any other
independents”.
Not unlike his father Kenny made little mark
during his first decades in the Dáil, contributing
on few occasions and when he invariably only
on issues of local import. Up to his early forties,
he lived with his widowed mother Ethna at the
family home in Derrycoosh near his electoral
base in Castlebar, when he wasn’t in Dublin for
Dáil business. He was known as an affable if
harmless player who liked the city night-life
until he settled down with his partner, Fionnu-
ala O’Kelly, a former Fianna Fáil and then RTE
press officer, in 1992. The pair had courted for
several years and later recounted how they
thought, wrongly, that they had maintained the
secrecy of their cross-party affair. She worked
directly for Charlie Haughey during those years
and was close to the former Taoiseach. Haughey
once told her that she did not have to leave the
job just because she was going out with the
Blueshirt, Kenny. Her Fine Gael connections
include a cousin, former GAA president and
MEP, Sean Kelly, although she has largely main-
tained a backroom role despite her deep
interest in political matters.
Exceptionally, she was paraded with her
husband after his leader’s speech to the FG ard
fheis in advance of the 2007 general election in
a not so subtle message to the people that at
least one candidate for Taoiseach had a steady
marriage. Ahern had recently separated from
long-term partner, Celia Larkin.
He saw off local ‘Flynnasty’ rivals, Pee and
his daughter Beverly, without ever becoming
too vocal about the former’s tribunal, and her
financial, travails. He had been responsible for
delaying Flynn’s entry to national politics when
the bombastic Fianna Fáil school teacher stood
back from standing in 1975 knowing that Kenny
was a shoe-in. He had to compete with Fine Gael
rivals, Myles Staunton, Michael Ring and Jim
Higgins for top dog, particularly after the Mayo
constituency was redrawn into a single five-
seater before the 1992 election. It has swung
between three seats to two for either party with
the advantage to Fine Gael in recent years. He
also overcame a bitter local dispute with former
party colleague and Castlebar councillor, Frank
Durcan.
Between 1981 and 1987 he was largely
ignored by party leader, Garret FitzGerald, who
devoted just a single mention to Kenny in his
voluminous memoirs although he briefly served
as junior minister for youth affairs from 1986
until the government was replaced by Haughey
and Fianna Fáil in the following year. Alan Dukes
was equally dismissive of him although he
appointed him to the front bench as spokesper-
son for the Gaeltacht.
When Bruton took over the leadership in
1991, he made Kenny junior minister with
responsiblity for job training and industrial
relations and later chief whip. He eventually
became a cabinet minister, with responsibility
for tourism and trade, again under John Bruton,
in the 1994-1997 coalition with Labour and
Democratic Left.
He famously rowed with journalist Vincent
E
nda Kenny leant back in the bath, smugly. He had spent
all day hiding the smugness. Up and down from Bel-
mullet to Lacken to Crossmolina bolting like a man half
his age, a streak of Louis Copeland suit, three-quarter-
smile and the matted yellow hair. The energy of a
Croagh Patrick hare. But smug withal. He’d kept it in in the butch-
er’s, in two housing estates, even with his driver. He was even
keeping it from Fionnuala. And she knew everything about him,
even the thing about not knowing the difference between GDP
and GNP, that he got a rash whenever anyone mentioned Michael
Ring, even the big thing about how Fine Gael floated financially
in the 1990s. Big Phil and Denis knew that one too. And Lowry.
That man you had to give him credit. And yet when you did the
media did you down. In 1996 he’d called him “a man of the high-
est integrity and honour”. But he knew not to do that now. Best
just to wait two seconds before answering that you wouldn’t go
into government with him. Or any other independents. Every-
one knew what you meant. They’d never get it out of him. He
was too ordinary. He put too much effort into it. And yet By Christ
he had a lot to be smug about. He slid down, high-fiving in the
mirror as the waters lapped over him, at home. Mary Mitchell-
O’Connor. Good boggy waters, good MAY-o waters. And then he
did his special purr. The one his elocutionist had told him above
all to control by the breathing. No one had ever heard it.
Miaaaooowooaaa. Taoiseach, Father of the Dáil, potential EU
President, scourge of the Vatican, National debt to GDP down
from 120 to 98. Saviour of his country. He gave it a John Wayne
and thumbed up to no one in particular. A closet smug guy. Mind
you he was careful to keep the hair out of the steamy soup below.
The hair guy would be in later in the week to deal with that. Flan-
nery had recommended him. Flannery: desperately clever, as
clever a man as God put on this earth. Or certainly clever than
his Taoiseach. Yet somehow he wished he’d got his Dáil pass
back from him. Loyalty wasn’t his thing. A fox, like O’Herlihy.
Bitten by a lizard, like young Varadkar. Not like Hogan. He loved
Hogan. So big and so far away now. It wasn’t the same without
him.He wondered what was the difference between a thought
and an idea. And a plan. He had about five points. But how many
ideas and thoughts did he have? His head swam in the steamy
bathroom. How ever many it was, Kennelly said it was more
than Bertie and Cowen combined. He’d put Kennelly on €156,380,
so he should know. Five-point plan. •What Paddy wants. •Keep
the Recovery Going. •Give the rich what they want. •Stop crime.
•Don’t ever go on Vincent Browne. "purporting" to be a TD, he’d
said. Could a point be a plan? How many policies in a five-point
plan: Protecting and Creating Jobs, Introducing better, fairer
budgets to keep taxes low, Creating a completely new health
system, Smaller better government, And a political system that
achieves more and costs less. He’d never thought to include a
reference to equality or poverty. Not his thing. Not the sort of
The stars and
international factors have
combined to see Kenny
emerge as the architect
of the fastest-growing
economy in Europe and
the cheerful bestower of
a fistful of promises

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