INSIDE POLITICS:Kenny's Roscommon flip-flop is is in a long and inglorious tradition of making and breaking election promises
COVERING POLITICAL demonstrations over the years, one has seen the slogan: “If voting could change anything, they would abolish it.” And it must be said that some events of the past week suggest voting doesn’t change very much.
The Taoiseach planted a landmine under his own political reputation when he told an RTÉ interviewer he had made no promises “that I couldn’t stand over” during the general election. It was surprising that so experienced a politician should give such an obvious hostage to fortune.
Sure enough, within 24 hours, this unwise declaration rebounded on Enda Kenny when a Sunday Business Postrecording emerged of him pledging faithfully in Roscommon to preserve the local hospital accident and emergency unit: "You know I don't come down here lightly to say these words," the soon-to-be taoiseach said in the recording.
Within another 24 hours, a radio interview with Joe Finnegan on Shannonside FM from last September had Labour leader Eamon Gilmore issuing a similar pronouncement.
The passion in both declarations is quite striking. There is a school of thought that politics is a form of theatre and that politicians are actors performing a script while the rest of us, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, are “pigeon-livered and lack gall”.
Former taoiseach Brian Cowen would probably describe it as “grandstanding” and he must have permitted himself a wry smile in Tullamore at this latest turn of events.
The people of Roscommon-South Leitrim certainly took Kenny’s undertaking at face value. His party colleagues Frank Feighan and Denis Naughten (the latter now banished from the fold), were re-elected with nearly 40 per cent of first preferences, to take their place in the serried ranks of 76 Fine Gael TDs.
It’s one of the oldest stories in the book: politicians promise the sun, moon and stars – or at least the preservation of an A&E department – before an election and, as soon as they get their hands on the levers of power, something emerges that means the promise cannot be implemented.
Naturally there is huge anger locally, which would have meant booing and catcalls and no doubt a sizeable protest if the Taoiseach were to turn up to watch his beloved native Mayo play Roscommon in the Connacht Senior GAA Football Final at Dr Hyde Park in Roscommon tomorrow; as it happens, he is visiting his children in the Gaeltacht.
The question of local hospital services is already haunting this Government. Naturally, we all want the best possible care within closest proximity to our homes but, as Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn keeps reminding us, this little State of ours is in receivership. That means an obvious limitation on health facilities at local level, apart from safety considerations arising in AEs with relatively low volumes of patients.
At the same time one cannot help thinking of a gravely ill Roscommon resident whose life is ebbing away as the ambulance ploughs its way towards Galway or some other distant location. What is the price of a human life? Hopefully the Taoiseach and Tánaiste will devote the same passion and energy evident in their pre-election declarations to finding a creative solution that will satisfy both sides in this controversy.
A legal ban on pre-election promises would of course be both undemocratic and unworkable, but suppose all parties and candidates voluntarily refused to give any undertakings prior to taking office? Would we vote for them if they didn’t tell us what we want to hear?
Jack Nicholson, in the film A Few Good Men, uttered the memorable line: "You can't handle the truth." Could we handle it if our politicians were upfront about the realities of the economic and financial situation? Winston Churchill promised "blood, toil, tears and sweat" and it seemed to go down well with the wartime British public. But as soon as they got a chance in 1945 they voted him out and gave Labour a landslide victory.
Another perception of the truth came from Moody’s rating agency this week when it reduced Ireland’s debt to junk-bond status. The Department of Finance sharply disagreed and, in the same vein, Micheál Martin spoke in the Dáil of a “badly reasoned and cavalier” assessment.
The record of Moody’s itself has been seriously questioned but there was a feeling also that it was like blaming the weather forecaster for the rain or the doctor for the disease he or she had just diagnosed.
Like election promises, our economic sins are catching up with us although this junk rating was a serious blow to national pride.
Breaking election promises is nothing new of course. It is part of a long and inglorious tradition. The one occasion where promises were promptly and resoundingly fulfilled was in the case of the infamous Fianna Fáil manifesto of 1977. There is virtually unanimous agreement that it would have been better had those promises never been implemented and there is also a view that they started the rot in the public finances that we are still dealing with today.
Some political activists undoubtedly feel that refusing to make promises at election time is for sissies and losers. You go out there to win – what’s the point of the exercise if you don’t end up being chaired around the count centre while your opponents smile weakly as they blink back their tears? In the age of 24/7 news coverage in print, on the airwaves and online, this is a high-risk approach. As Kenny and Gilmore discovered to their cost, your words can come back to plague you.
A side effect of the publication of the Cloyne report was that it took the spotlight and the heat off the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. They were both very much to the fore in challenging the errant and irresponsible behaviour of church authorities, including the Vatican itself. Hopefully that was more than grandstanding because, serious though the Roscommon hospital situation undoubtedly is, the welfare of our children must have the highest priority.
Stephen Collins is on leave