As he prepares for Fine Gael's two-day parliamentary party meeting next week, Mark Brennock finds Enda Kenny focused on becoming taoiseach
Attacked for offering no policies, denounced as Third World-style economic managers, it was the best week so far for Fine Gael and Labour since they announced their plan to offer themselves to voters as an alternative government.Ahead of their two-day parliamentary party meeting in Portlaoise next week Fine Gael strategists say Fianna Fáil's hyperbolic assault on them in Cavan has boosted them in the public mind and that despite needing to gain some 30 seats, they are now seen as serious contenders. In his Leinster House office this week, Enda Kenny seemed content to be receiving the attention.
"The fact that they spent a considerable amount of time talking about Fine Gael and Labour speaks for itself. They weren't concentrating on what they are supposed to be doing which is running the country and implementing their own programme for Government."
He dismisses some of the Fianna Fáil jibes. "On the very day that Micheál Martin said that it would be impossible for Fine Gael and Labour to come to an agreement for instance on something like social partnership, we actually published an agreed document on that." The document published in Mullingar last Monday is the first in what the parties say will be a series of joint positions.
Kenny pleads guilty to a second charge: That apart from joint papers on a few specific issues, Fine Gael and Labour are not going to produce a detailed joint policy platform any time soon.
"Fianna Fáil would probably love a situation where Fine Gael and Labour would now produce a list of items and say this is what we intend to do," he says. Kenny appears to believe that this would give Fianna Fáil something to attack and distort for 18 months, so Fine Gael won't oblige.
"We will continue to work together in a number of areas and before the election we will publish an agreed action plan on key areas that affect the lives of people every day in this country. We will publish that work ourselves in our own time and we won't be taunted into it by Fianna Fáil and the Government, who are clearly very worried."
So what will they do if elected? He characterises his alternative rather vaguely as one involving "honest leadership, energetic endeavour on behalf of the people, protection of the public purse and using the fruits of the economy in the people's interest".
Pressed on what policies Fine Gael has produced, he lists a number of things: The "taxback" campaign to encourage people to reclaim overpaid tax; proposals on primary health care from Liam Twomey, agriculture proposals from Denis Naughten; proposals on the provision of statistics on primary schools from Olwyn Enright. A thick brown envelope landed on this reporter's desk the next day containing further documents on issues such as anti-social behaviour and suicide prevention to demonstrate the party is not entirely thought free.
Most of these documents cover narrow areas, although there is one major exception. Deputy leader Richard Bruton has produced a detailed, well-researched analysis of public spending efficiency and a comprehensive set of proposals to reform how the public finances are managed.
While acknowledging the worth of that paper, Kenny says that producing "tomes of work" in relation to policy isn't the be all and end all. Health, education, crime and public administration are policy areas where the party has "serious ideas", he says, but does not elaborate.
However, he did raise, unprompted, his plans to undergo another nationwide tour shortly. He said selection conventions were starting soon, there were great candidates available, it was a young people's party, they were very confident, the election campaign was going to be very exciting and something he was looking forward to tremendously.
He is obviously focused on winning and the electoral mechanics of how he will win rather than on the specifics of what he will do if he does indeed win. "There is an opportunity here for a fresh wind to blow through the political corridors, " he says.
In the interim, "Fine Gael will continue to produce its own individual party policies as I'm sure the Labour Party will". There would be a joint statement on principles close to election day.
And yes a Fine Gael led government could involve the Green Party but he is careful to be seen to respect their decision to fight the next election independent of alliances.
"We have co-operated with the Green Party on motions to the Dáil and we will do so again. But they are their own party, they make their own decisions, they have their own views."
He doesn't miss a chance to signal his openness to their ideas though: "We are going to be working in the area of energy and agriculture and environment and there will be some developments there that are obviously parallel with some of the issues the Greens are talking about."
Could Fine Gael and Labour agree for one party to stand aside in favour of the other in certain constituencies? "We haven't any agreement on specific constituencies. Obviously the Labour Party will select their own and so we will we. It is something we haven't actually discussed to be quite honest with you," he says, leaving open the possibility that it could come up in the future. "We have identified 30 constituencies where we could win."
Asked do these include Labour seats or Labour's target seats he says: "Obviously we're not intending to take any Labour seats." He said they include PD seats. "Our intention is to knock the PDs out of Government as well and to go after those seats in a big way." He returned to his plans to do in the PDs later on - his apparent courtship of them a while ago annoyed the Labour people. "Our job is to knock them about and we are going to go after their seats. We will wait and see what happens. Our focus is entirely on building the foundations with the Labour Party."
The other charge made by Fianna Fáil this week was that Fine Gael and Labour were set to tear up tried and tested economic policies, causing unemployment, emigration and national disaster. In fact Enda Kenny doesn't sound like he intends to do much different at all in relation to economic policy. He is in favour of "keeping the economy strong, being pro-business and pro-enterprise". Nothing shocking there. In relation to taxation, "we favour low rates of personal taxation, we introduced the Corporation Tax rate of 12.5 per cent, and we favour that continuing obviously". He dismisses the Government's claim that specific policies introduced by Fianna Fáil brought economic success. "They wouldn't be able to make that claim if it hadn't been for the competence of the 1994 - 1997 rainbow government. It was the first government in 27 years to bring in a budgetary surplus. John Bruton as taoiseach and Ruairí Quinn as minister for finance kept a very clear line on minding the people's money and the country's interest. In terms of being a safe pair of hands for the economy Fine Gael and Labour have proven that they can do this and they will do it again."
Fine Gael's "big idea" since 2002 has related to the question of value for money. They have contributed to the widely held view that prices in Ireland are unjustifiably high, that much public spending is wasteful, and that the Government is responsible for both.
The core of Fine Gael's pitch to voters is that it will manage public money better. "It is about competence and effective management of the people's taxes, but it is also about a change in direction in the sense of being really effective in providing frontline services for people. It's the use of the monies that come in terms of provision of services that's critical then."
Like Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny has read Prof Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone, which details the loss of social capital - individuals' connections to family and community - that has come with prosperity. "I don't know why a party that always says it is closest to the grassroots had to bring over Robert Putnam to tell them," he remarks. "Putnam's basic theory that economic prosperity has brought about a shift in community values is true and it should be addressed," he says.
Society had never acknowledged the value of the work done by women at home. Now they were moving out of the home in large numbers, society was feeling the effects. "You have had the eruption of the whole childcare issue and the pressures on everybody's lives." But Kenny offers no prescription for what to do. In relation to the individualisation of the standard rate tax band introduced by Charlie McCreevy - giving two income couples larger tax allowances than single income households - he says it is too late to change this. Fine Gael opposed it at the time but "you can't go back so you have got to look at what you can do in the future. It is now embedded in the entire tax system."
The "Colombia Three" should be jailed in Ireland, he says simply and if Colombia signs up to a Council of Europe Convention on this, then it can happen. "You can't have the institutions of the State that were founded by this party subverted by people like this and we won't allow that to happen." He says the fact that the "Colombia Three" so far appear to be untouchable is making Ireland attractive to criminals, international terrorists and possibly paedophile priests.
"The direct consequence of the "Colombia Three" being here and giving two fingers to the Irish system is that you are now having criminal types of other categories wanting to come to Ireland on the basis that it is a safe haven and I understand there has been some movement in that direction also by paedophile priests." These people wanted to come here and some may already have done so "because the perception is out there that this is a safe haven and if you get to Ireland you are not going to be touched." He had this "from an authoritative source - absolutely."
He is committed to reversing restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act introduced by this Government. "There shouldn't be any restriction on people finding out information. As far as we are concerned we have nothing to hide."
Except, perhaps, a few policy documents. But while Fianna Fáil did produce many such documents, it was more concerned in the last two election campaigns with getting its leader into every town, striding down main street shaking hands as his face looked down from every lamp post. Now Enda Kenny is shaping up to do the same.