Paddy is getting impatient waiting for Enda to be frank

This week last year the political news headlines were dominated by stories and commentary about how Enda Kenny was avoiding substantial engagement with the media. It was the last days of the Seanad referendum campaign. Not only had he declined invites from RTÉ and TV3 to participate in their live referendum debates but he had also declined all requests for substantial interviews during the campaign period.

Those of us running the No side of that referendum campaign had confidently banked on Kenny not entering the fray. We knew in advance that his avoidance would become an issue. Our strategy was designed in part around characterising Seanad abolition as a top-of-the-head proposal advanced by Kenny which even he could not competently stand over.

Some in the No campaign worried that by agreeing to do even one extended interview on the topic Kenny might undermine our strategy. We told them not to fret, anyone who had heard the Taoiseach try to argue the point privately knew that his reasons for Seanad abolition were vague and muddled and that he was not able to articulate them coherently.

If he dared to subject himself to even a single one-on-one encounter any interviewer worth his or her salt would have destroyed him live on air.

Lesser of two evils

As we say in the courts, Kenny would have made a bad witness in his own case. Damaging and all as it was for the Yes cause, keeping him away from cross-examination or debate was the lesser of two evils for the Fine Gael campaign.

The way Kenny is communicating on the run about the McNulty controversy mirrors his approach to the Seanad referendum. He did lots of walk-by interviews then also with the media pack at the ploughing match or at jobs announcements and otherwise confined himself to scripted argument and occasional off- script waffle in the Dáil.

The fact that Kenny was not prepared to debate his own proposal for constitutional change was perhaps the decisive issue in the outcome of the Seanad referendum. The electorate drew inferences from his silence.

Kenny is not the first Taoiseach to duck and dive media or substantial parliamentary debate but he is the one who promised it would be different. “Paddy likes to know,” he said on election night in 2011.

During last year’s referendum, during the various justice controversies earlier this year and now again during the McNulty controversy, Kenny and many of his Ministers chose to talk to “Paddy” only on their own terms and only at times of their own choosing.

The Taoiseach’s various utterances about the McNulty issue over the last seven days have been classic Kenny.

On Thursday last he denied all blame and fingered Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys as having entire responsibility for the decision to appoint McNulty to the Irish Museum of Modern Art board.

As speculated here last week, it’s now clear that there is paperwork from Kenny’s handlers or Fine Gael headquarters to Humphreys seeking McNulty’s appointment.

He was forced to reverse tack. On Friday he accepted full responsibility himself, but then on Monday fingered officials in Fine Gael headquarters for the cock-up.

Kenny’s newly-apologetic stance is convoluted. He sounds like a penitent rattling off the “Bless me father for I have sinned . . .” mantra but then refusing to say what sins he seeks absolution for while simultaneously blaming some lads he was with for leading him astray.

Meanwhile, direct questions about the appointment from Morning Ireland and other media and from Opposition leaders simply go unanswered while uniformed Fine Gael backbench TDs and Senators are wheeled out on prime time news and current affairs programmes to try to defend the indefensible.

Closed doors

This time around not only is it Kenny who has to be kept back from the media. His newest Minister, Heather Humphreys, has also fallen mute. She speaks only behind the closed doors of the parliamentary party because she is either not up to crisis media communication at the level usually expected of a Cabinet Minister or because anything she does say can only further implicate Kenny in what occurred.

Kenny’s inability to engage in substantial interview or debate does not mean he is a bad Taoiseach or party leader. He has a mix of other skills which have assisted the economic recovery and have kept his coalition working well.

Kenny’s lack of capacity to withstand media and parliamentary cross-examination is a central weakness, however, and one which could be his undoing – maybe even before the next election.

He may now be able to move on from the McNulty controversy as he did from the Callinan resignation, but he can only run for so long.

Paddy is getting impatient waiting for the candour which Enda once promised.