WHETHER OR not Willie Penrose is the last individual political casualty during either the three-week run-up to the budget, his resignation is a painful warning to Labour of the difficult internal tensions that it, and the Coalition, are likely to find increasingly part of their day-to-day existence. A full-scale mutiny does not appear to be likely, but the Coalition’s huge majority is likely to suffer from a continuing drip-drip attrition over time as it administers the pain that most agree is necessary.
Mr Penrose’s resignation, both as a “super junior” minister and from the party whip, followed that of Denis Naughten from Fine Gael over the Roscommon hospital closure. Both resignations spoke well of the honourable determination of both men to stand by general election undertakings now repudiated by their parties. In both cases the specific undertakings – by Eamon Gilmore to defend the Columb Barracks in Mullingar, and by most of the Fine Gael leadership to do likewise for Roscommon hospital – were precisely the sort which have done so much to breed a destructive popular cynicism about politics. There were other categorical undertakings, such as Labour’s education promises, which brought tens of thousands of angry students on to Dublin’s streets yesterday. They were made in the certainty they will be broken, by politicians who play a nudge-nudge, wink-wink game with the voters. The unwritten subtext is always, of course, that should the coffers be bare when we get into office, all bets are off.
In truth, were all Government TDs to adhere to what we might call the Naughten-Penrose standard, such would be the flood of resignations that there would hardly be one left in office. Not, of course, that the Opposition is any better – to renege on promises you have to be in office. But they made promises aplenty too.
To an extent the voters willingly collude in the lie. It is probably true to say that most in the general election were more preoccupied with getting Fianna Fáil out than with the detail of the promises of those who would replace them. Pressed, most voters would probably also have admitted that they did not put much faith in such promises. But they also feel entitled to complain when politicians then go back on their word.
Is it holier-than-thou to complain about broken promises? Is there perhaps an acceptable level of mendacity which we should be prepared to tolerate to grease the wheels of public debate? Is it not unreasonable to require politicians to implement promises which clearly, whether when made or when they are to be implemented, are not affordable? Surely, the realist will argue against the moralist, the “national interest” must be put ahead of our concern for the souls of lying politicians – they should do the “right” thing.
The challenge is, as ever, where to draw the line. And the Naughten-Penrose line is not everyone’s. But politics has had a reality check. The credibility of the political class is at rock bottom and was certainly not enhanced by the promissory notes issued in the last election. The currency is again debased.