INSIDE POLITICS:When a critical moment arrived for this Republic, Fianna Fáil was found wanting and it may not survive that sad fact, writes HARRY McGEE
IN THE sweltering summer of 1982, the big media obsession was the hunt for a suspect who killed a young nurse in the Phoenix Park and a farmer in Edenderry, Co Offaly, with no apparent motive. When the killer, Malcolm Macarthur, was eventually arrested in the home of the then attorney general Patrick Connolly, it created a political maelstrom for the then Fianna Fáil government.
Struggling to describe the unreal chain of events, Charles Haughey strung four adjectives together: “Grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented.” Gubu was born.
Since then the acronym has become the chosen pejorative term to describe strange occurrences unique to the Irish political psyche – more precisely, that of Fianna Fáil. Gubu has branded the phone-tapping of journalists, the bitter falling apart of a Fianna Fáil and Labour coalition over the extradition of a paedophile priest and a multiplicity of payment scandals surrounding senior Fianna Fáil figures, from Haughey to Bertie Ahern.
Only gubu can fully describe the surreal events of this week in November last year, when the government most closely associated with the independent State drove it back into the ditch of subservience.
Looked at a year later, the denials of what was actually happening to this Republic were almost comical, the consequences were almost biblical.
As a consequence, ministers were portrayed as dissemblers. Dermot Ahern’s dismissal of bailout talks as “fiction” over the first weekend of the crisis rebounded terribly on him, as did his double-act with Noel Dempsey in Dublin Castle the next day, a Monday. Asked was a bailout imminent, he replied: “Well, I’m not aware of it and nor is Noel.” All the while Dempsey shook his head solemnly like an overeager extra.
When then taoiseach Brian Cowen came on RTÉ’s Six-One later that Monday, he gave an interview that was as impenetrable as Crosaire. An extract from his contribution: “We are engaged with our counterparts in discussing with them how best we can underpin banking and financial stability.”
On the same programme, it was left to Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan to add political context. His response to Cowen: “He needs to speak plainly and not speak in riddles. People are very worried, about their bank accounts, about their jobs and about their country. They need plain speaking and the feeling that the government is still in charge. We have had incredible denials from so many shell-shocked ministers over the past 24 hours.”
It was dramatic – and it had a devastating effect. Noonan’s plain speaking exposed the terrible communication failures and the sclerosis evident in government.
The final nail came on Thursday with Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan’s phone call to Morning Ireland to confirm a “large loan facility” was being discussed.
Still it took the appearance of the International Monetary Fund’s Ajai Chopra on the streets of Dublin for the government to finally relinquish its very own “fiction”.
There was some post-hoc rationalisation from then minister for finance Brian Lenihan who argued that conceding the possibility of a bailout would have weakened the government’s hand in delicate negotiations. It would not. The deal brokered could hardly have been lousier.
The strategy of denial – and the partial briefings of senior ministers and coalition partners, the Greens – was a disaster. The banks were always going to survive, even as husks, thanks to the ECB, but the paradox was that the grand Irish institution most likely to be our Lehmans or Bear Stearns was Fianna Fáil.
There has been far too much focus on the bank guarantee of September 2008 as the problem. It wasn’t the problem. That came courtesy of the massive property bubble and complementary bank profligacy. Once the extent of it was discovered, it was too late. To deal with it in isolation was akin to repelling an invading force armed only with pea shooters. In hindsight, the blanket guarantee may well have been the wrong choice, but all other choices may have been wrong too.
At the same time it is certain the European Central Bank would never have countenanced any Irish bank failing in 2008 or 2009 or for any bondholders to be burned. Going it alone at that stage would have certainly led us into the territory of Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”. The consequences were unfathomable.
Economically, and because of wider euro zone problems, the Republic was on an unalterable course. Ultimately, the government could do little about it.
The only strength it had was to act in a political way – to explain the nature of the problem, set out a course of action and try to bring them along. It singularly failed to do that. Cowen’s communication skills were abject: he was secretive, defensive and indecisive. The damage still lingered of his woeful Morning Ireland interview at the party think-in. Two months earlier, by contrast, the ever-optimistic and sometimes arrogant Lenihan grew in authority despite his illness. But he overextended himself in the end and fired off one magic bullet too many.
For the first three days of engagement, the government held out against a bailout – and that’s why the ministerial denials were not untrue. But then they weren’t fully upfront either.
Lenihan told the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet that the State could paddle its own canoe. The government, he said, had enough funding for nine months, had recourse to the pension reserve fund and could burn bondholders. But this was all anathema to Trichet. Lenihan then pursued the idea of a precautionary facility, which would allow the Republic to have fire power to back it up, but would not mean drawing down funds.
The ECB however dug its heels in. It was the EFSF bailout fund (with unavoidable IMF involvement) or nothing. The commission and other member states would not buy into any other plan.
It was at that stage (on the Tuesday night) that Lenihan and Cowen should have fessed up, but they didn’t. If it were a government in the early days of its term, they might have got away with it, but the reputation of Cowen’s government was already in tatters.
It was a gubu moment. Cowen and his colleagues did have choices. They chose the wrong ones. Looked at in isolation, the political failure was gargantuan.