OUTSIDE POLITICS - MORE ON THAT BOOK

Gill and Macmillan issued a long statement today in which it admitted that there were credibility issues surrounding Justine Delaney Wilson while still standing over the authenticity of the book.

Confused?

So was I. If there are issues that go to the credibility of the author, then it follows by corollary there are issues that go the credibility of the book. (I have appended the statement in full at the bottom of this piece to allow you make up your own minds).

Anyway, first, here is a think piece I wrote for this morning's paper. And beneath it is the statement issued by the publisher today:

There are times when stories crop up in print that seem just too good to be true. The scurrilous story surrounding Liam Lawlor’s death in Moscow. The unfounded allegations carried by Magill in 2002 that Mary Harney had accepted cash from a businessman. And of course Corkman Denis ‘Starry’ O’Brien’ claims that he gave Bertie Ahern £30,000 in the car park of the Burlington Hotel in 1991.
All of those stories had one common feature. They weren’t true.
And as yesterday’s amazing and frankly farcical events unfolded, you sensed that another story is about to join that growing list – the claim that a serving government minister was a regular snorter of cocaine.
The claim is made in Delaney Wilson book High society and then buttressed in the RTE series of the same name, though the minister is demoted and is now merely described Robert the Politician.
But from the moment Delaney Wilson aired the claim in public, there has been considerable scepticisms about it.
To be frank, journalists and politicians alike have simply not believed that a Government minister moseyed across the road from Leinster House to Buswells Hotel and admitted to a journalist (with whom he was not familiar) that he was a regular user of cocaine. And all the while, she was recording this and taking down contemporaneous notes.
The holes and contradictions of how this purported interview took place have reached almost cartoonish proportions in the past 48 hours.
And what it unusual and perturbing is that the RTE has found itself skating on very thin ice indeed when it comes to standing up the claims; and being honest and forthcoming about the information it has at its disposal.
The documentary series itself was appalling television. Not one ‘real life’ cocaine user or dealer was accessed on screen. The approach taken was to reconstruct everything using actors. There is a difficulty with this. You just don’t know what is real. We are given an assurance that everything is true but have to take Justine Delaney Wilson’s word for it. And everything that we see is based on information that is anonymous; unsubstantiated and unverifiable. How do we verify if a pilot or a judge or a politician took cocaine? We can’t.
Surely, it would not have been too hard to find a few former cocaine users who would be willing to talk openly – for example, a well-known male socialite, Gavin Lambe Murphy, and an Irish Independent journalist, Ian O’Doherty, have both publicly admitted that they snorted cocaine in the past.
But the central difficulty was her claim about the Minister, the one that most people zeroed in on. For weeks, journalists have been asking RTE questions about this claim.
In its response, RTE stated that it had “access to the body of material gathered by Ms Delaney Wilson, including listening to taped interview material.”
The clear impression that most journalists took from that was that the interview with the minister was taped. And RTE did nothing to disabuse newspapers which interpreted it that way last weekend. That’s why the station was accused of misleading yesterday. The response to this from Kevin Dawson, the commissioning editor of factual programmes was puzzling: RTE, in defending confidential relationships, he said, had “to be relatively economical in terms of what is said.”
Really? Why? Even if it had the effect of misleading journalists to interpret a statement incorrectly and not have it corrected.
As Sean O’Rourke put it in his remarkably tough interview with Dawson yesterday, the full story had to be beaten out of RTE.
And that was that there was no tape.
And when O’Rourke played a clip of an interview with Delaney Wilson from October 4 – where she said she recorded the interview with the minister and retained the recording – that’s when the alarm bells started to go off.
It was “troubling”, admitted Dawson. It was more than that. It undermined (fatally) the credibility of the claim. And Gill and Macmillan will also have to explain its comments to the Sunday Times on October 28, when a spokeswoman said that the publisher and its lawyers have listened to a recording of the interview with the minister and have kept two copies of this tape.
And then, to cap it all, Delaney Wilson issued a statement last night through her solicitors in which she claimed that she both recorded the interview and took contemporaneous notes.
And then the gnomic: “I have not retained the digital recording.”
That’s a pity. Because this is another story that just seems too good to be true.

STATEMENT FROM GILL and MACMILLAN LIMITED





Justine Delaney Wilson, The High Society





We wish to respond to press speculation surrounding the publication of
this book and the verification procedures that we undertook to
authenticate the material it contains.



The source materials, as presented to us by the author, were the texts
of the author's interviews with her subjects. Most were in digital audio
form. A minority were in the form of contemporaneous notes taken by the
author in circumstances where she has stated that the subjects did not
consent to be interviewed because of the danger of voice recognition.
Among the interviewees in this latter category was a person described in
the book as Robert, a government minister.



As a condition of publication the author was required to satisfy the
authenticity of the source material. A number of meetings were held over
a twelve-month period, during which a thorough examination of this
material, recorded and transcribed, was conducted by ourselves and our
legal advisors. On the basis of a thorough examination of this material,
we were satisfied that the text of the book was a faithful version of
the interviews. We were also satisfied that the interviews were
authentic and not staged, and that, in the case of the audio material,
the interviewees were at all times aware of being recorded and that
there were no hidden microphones.



However, the author has now admitted, through her own solicitors, that
all subjects were recorded, including the politician. She then formed an
A and B list of these recordings, transcribed the A list and represented
it to us as being the only version of these interviews. The B list was
delivered to us in digital audio form. At no time did we have reason to
believe that there was any audio version of the A list. It was agreed
that, having satisfied ourselves as to the authenticity of the
transcripts, the author would retain them, while we retained the audio
tapes.



After the book was published, one newspaper made a number of attempts to
force the identity of the minister from the author, called the author's
credentials and personal life into question -- including an allegation
concerning her young child. These attempts grew so intense and
personalised that, on the advice of her own solicitor, the author
destroyed the recordings and transcripts. She did this without any
reference to us or to our lawyers. Had she contacted us, we would have
advised her strongly against this course and arranged to have the
material placed in safe keeping. Instead, we were presented with a fait
accompli. It now emerges that the previously unknown audio recordings,
on which these transcripts were based, were also destroyed.



There are issues of authenticity and issues of credibility. Ironically,
nothing in all this causes us to doubt the veracity of the book as
printed. Were we to do so, we would withdraw it from sale without
hesitation. But on the credibility issue, the author has placed herself
in a completely unsatisfactory position. Once it became public knowledge
that that there was apparently no recording of the politician, only a
transcript, we acknowledged that as being our understanding. We now
know, as of 19 November - a full seven weeks following first publication
- that this was not so.



The pity of all this is that that it was unnecessary. If the author had
been open and frank with us at all times, she would have had nothing to
fear. The evidential value of her source material was and remains
overwhelmingly convincing. The identities of those interviewed and
referred to in the book are known to us and our legal advisors. The
material in the book is true and we continue to stand over it.



As far as the recordings retained by us are concerned, we shall under no
circumstances release these, as they were taken in strictest confidence.



We shall make no further comment on this matter for the moment.

OUTSIDE POLITICS - HIGH SOCIETY

High Society was one of the worst documentaries I have ever seen. To my mind the idea of using anonymous sources and then making a documentary that relied wholly on reconstructions was questionable.

Journalists use anonymous sources all the time. But they are reluctant to rely on them to such an extent - we usually look for independent corroboration or some form of documentation to back it up. This was different... everything was based on anonymous, unsubstantiated and unverifiable information.

And journalists used to using sources also know when there's something innately unnerving about the use of a source. And there was always something about Justine Delaney Wilson's purported interview with a Government minister that didn't have the ring of credibility about it.

Yesterday it emerged in The Sunday Tribune (a Kevin Rafter and Ali Bracken story) that there is no recording in existence of the interview with the Minister (as we were all led to believe). RTE admitted that the interview was conducted using contemporaneous notes.

And today in his masterful interview with RTE's commissioning editor of factual programmes Kevin Dawson, Sean O'Rourke pulled a rabbit from the hat: namely an interview that was conducted with Delaney Wilson on Drivetime on October 4 in which she said she had taped the interview and kept copies of the tape. (listen to O'Rourke's interview with Dawson here)

And now in the latest (farcical) twist, the author, who is abroad on holidays, claims she both recorded the interview while taking contemporaneous notes and subsequently erased the recording. Yeah, right!

INSIDE POLITICS - FIVE MORE YEARS

If RTE's exit poll this morning is accurate, then Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fail have pulled off a Houdini-esque act of political escapology. And our predictions will have been rendered null & void.

In the first week of the campaign, I was chatting to Brian Cowen and he reminded me of the comeback by Offaly hurlers in 1994, when they scored 2-4 on the last four minutes to shock Limerick.

If the figures are accurate (and they were within a point in 2002) it means FF will be in the driving seat. However, the party had a massive seat bounce in 2002 and picked up a lot of transfers - principally because of a divided and fragmented opposition. This time round FG and Labour will do better in enticing transfers.

A vote of 26% for FG will be good but Labour will be deeply deeply disappointed with figures that show it standing still, or even going backwards.

As in 2002, the opinion polls seem to have overstated GP and SF vote. Primary reason for this is that both parties attract a strong vote from younger people and - despite good intentions and campaigns like Rock the Vote - the percentage of this cohort that votes is low. Also SF attracts a stronger vote in blue-collar areas - again the percentage is lower than in middle class and rural areas.

Five More Years! Incredible.

For those who didn't hear RTE, here are the figures:

FF: 41.6% (-)
FG: 26.3% (+4)
Lab: 9.9% (-1)
SF 7.3% (+.8)
GP 4.8% (+1)
PD 2.6% (-1.4)

INSIDE POLITICS - THE ANORAK OR GORETEX

Modern politics is like high street garments. They are designed for obsolescence. Like a Kate Moss cutaway dress or a practical blue Anorak, you’ll get a couple of good years out of them if your are lucky and then they are chucked.

But ten years? Or fifteen years? That’s an eternity.
The evidence is self-evident. In Europe over the past few years, we have seen a rake of two-term and three-term leaders getting the flick from the electorate or their colleagues.

José María Aznar retired after nine years in Spain. Silvio Berlusconi got the guts of a decade in Italy before getting the heave-ho. Gerhard Schroeder had eight years in Germany before . The messianic Jacques Chirac got the heave-ho (even though he managed to last 12). And even Bertie Ahern’s closest foreign ally, Tony Blair – the man whose career has mirrored his own in lots of ways – was given no more than a decade before he got the order of the boot.

A year or more ago, when Ahern began to creep into the record books for running second only to de Valera in terms of longevity, there was an assumption that, like Mr Tony, he would get his third term and his shot at 15 years. Like Mr Tony, election number three wasn’t going to come as easily as election number two but he was still going to limp home. It was a very neat assumption and had a nice symmetry to it. Problem was that it was wrong.

I went out earlier this week to see the various parties canvass. And what struck me was that it was like 2002 all over again except that all the hype and goodwill was now following Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte and not Ahern. We all know that Kenny can shake more hands in an instant than a packed church offering the sign of peace. But the reaction to Rabbitte was more interesting. He is diffident and a bit wooden on the stump with none of the ‘howya horse’ gregariousness of Kenny. But people were actually seeking him out, shaking his hand, wanting to talk to him. And during the course of the day, I heard a phrase that will fall on Fianna Fail ears like poison:

“Maybe it’s time for a change”.

And that’s what may fell this Government in the end. Not the health services. Not BertieGate. Not the record on crime. Or eduation. Or health. Or decentralisation. Or e-voting. But for a far more visceral reasons - because they have been there too long and there’s a need for change.

The Anorak has been there for a long time and has given some service. But it’s beginning to let in the rain. And would it be much better to plump for brightly-coloured Mr Goretex - newer, more modern, and much more lightweight.

With the exception of Richard Bruton and one or two others, the Fine Gael front bench isn’t exactly rippling with top talent. Its promises, for all its hard sell, doesn’t amount to that much. Enda’s contract with the people is just a political promise dressed up in another way. Sure he’ll not seek the office of Taoiseach again if he doesn’t fulfil it. But who’ll be the judge of that? Himself, ultimately. I’m sure there will be many mitigation factors to be found if those 2,300 beds are not built or the 2,000 cops (or is it only 1,000) aren’t pounding the beat. That’s what politicians do. They make promises. They break them. They explain them away by talking about new priorities and review.

I must say that I have huge problems with FG’s policies on crime which are Pavlovian, knee-jerk, cynical, hysterical, scaremongering and populist. (And neither FF, the PDs or Labour do much better sadly). Boot camps. Drunk tanks. Electronic tagging. Tougher remission laws. Sounds real tough. All I can say is thank goodness for our constitution. And thank goodness some of the more lunatic ones will never see the light of day.

Having said that, Fine Gael’s revival has been stunning. From a hair’s breadth away from extinction in 2002, it is now but a hair’s breadth away from government. And their recovery has borrowed heavily from the triangulation techniques perfected by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (where else have they featured this week). So, well have they positioned themselves that the choice offered to the electorate is a simple one between the Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fail and the Bertie Ahern of Fine Gael.

The policy choices, the implementation, won’t change that much despite all the promises. Because many of the difficulties in health, crime, education, infrastructure and all the other things in the mix are long-term, complicated, multi-faceted and subject to drawn-out procedures. But they promise they can do it differently. That’s the rub.

Consider this stale but relevant cliché. Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them. The Fianna Fail campaign has been shockingly fragmented, incoherent and all at sea. Last Monday, Brian Cowen came out fighting with a full-frontal attack on the Mullingar Accord’s spending plans. But they couldn’t sustain it, even for 24 hours. It would take a further two days for the party to seize the initiative and that was with the showdown between the two leaders on PrimeTime. Ahern looked tired but for the first time we saw a hunger and desire there after two and half weeks of being on the back foot and being out of sorts.

But victories in TV debates are not decisive and determinate. Fianna Fail and the PDs had already leaked gallons of support to the alternative. On second viewing, my own view that Ahern was the clear winner of the TV debate was reinforced. But by surviving almost unscathed Kenny also won big. He can now say that he wasn’t the corporal who by some outrageous stroke of fortune became a lucky General.

It’s going to be very tight, knife-edge close. The key electorate, the floating voters, are wavering about if 10 years is long enough, or whether there’s another couple of years wear left in the anorak.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE DEBATE

It’s staggering how often a hugely hyped and over-anticipated event like the World Cup Final has turned into a tense defensive battle.

And in a way so it was in the head-to-head between the two potential Taoisigh of the country, Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny last night. Presenter Miriam O’Callaghan described it as the “climax” of the election campaign but you felt that perhaps the denouement will not come until next weekend.

Nevertheless, it was intriguing, somewhat bruising, and told us a lot about the two leaders. It might have lacked the venom and sound-bytes of the previous night, but there was far more engagement on issues with both scoring heavily on key issues.

If there was a winner it was Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who had the edge when it came to challenging Mr Kenny on his health costings, his tax proposals, as well as getting Mr Kenny to admit that his justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe did not have the correct information at his disposal last week.

The biggest stumbler Mr Ahern faced was when Miriam O’Callaghan prefaced the next section with a reminder that the Government was in power for ten years, had record resources at its disposal but hadn’t delivered on the particular area, be it health, crime or education. On a couple of occasions, he found himself in the uncomfortable territory of admitting that promises had not been achieved.

Mr Kenny showed he has travelled a massive distance in terms of dealing with intensive and detailed debates of this manner. Like Mr Ahern, he relaxed quickly, recovered from any gaffes or admissions, and was assertive without being aggressive.

While acquitting himself well, he found himself very much on the back foot on a few occasions when it came to explaining the details of his promises.

He found himself in difficulties explaining how promises in his contract would be realised – the 2,300 extra hospital beds; the medical cards for under fives in particular. Impossible, said Mr Ahern for both, an argument Mr Kenny never fully managed to nail down. Mr Kenny also never address Mr Ahern’s assertion that FG’s tax policies would most benefit the richest 3%.

His worst moments, surprisingly, came on crime. When it was put to him that his justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe had admitted there was no increase in crime rate, Mr Kenny had to essentially dress Mr O’Keeffe down on air, with an excuse that Mr O’Keefe did not have the statistics to hand. No matter how he phrased it, it was always going to look bad.

And the Taoiseach also scored heavily with his argument that the 2,000 extra gardai promised by Fine Gael provides funding for only 1,000 plus those who will go into training in Templemore this year. This was a biggie. While the Government has struggled (and arguably failed) to get 14,000 cops by the end of this year, Kenny's plan provides not for 2,000 but for 1,000 extra on top of them. It's promise of 2,000 but based on them being additional to there at the moment not including those in Templemore.

However, for many of the arguments – with both going into detail – the results were marginal or inconclusive. Both men were relaxed but Mr Kenny kept a polite and friendly composure throughout, compared to the edgier and slightly more aggressive pose struck by the Taoiseach.

Mr Ahern did find himself in difficulties on health, especially on a question Ms O’Callaghan asked about cystic fibrosis. Mr Kenny was strong here, especially in his portrayal of the “gargantuan failure” in A&E and primary care, as well as the failure of government to provide 3,000 beds. He also gouged a bit at the edges on the huge amount of public monies that was spent and wasted on PPARS - Mr Ahern's general response about the huge numbers in the health service didn't convince.

On other specific points, he was also able to successfully argue that the Government had failed in its promise to build a metro for Dublin by 2007. He was also marginally stronger on the issues of stamp duty and on quality of life.

The format was as five years ago, with both leaders making a pitch at the start and then debating five pre-agreed topics including health, education, crime, value for money, and the economy.

In his opening response to Ms O’Callaghan the Taoiseach, looking relaxed, spoke about his record over the past ten years and made an effective pitch by pointing to his working class roots in Drumcondra.

The Fine Gael leader immediately confronted by one of his Achilles Hells, lack of ministerial experience, answered confidently by referring to his time as Minister for Trade and the leadership qualities he has shown since becoming FG leader.

When the subject turned to priorities, Mr Ahern said that a strong economy was paramount. Mr Kenny agreed but said that it was the last Fine Gael government which sowed the seeds.

Mr Kenny quickly turned to his contract and his promise that he won’t seek re-election if he doesn’t achieve all its goals. Ms O’Callaghan asked the obvious question about who would judge if he achieved or failed. He answered that it would be self-obvious.

The presenter then honed in on the controversy surrounding Mr Ahern’s finances. Again there were close uncomfortable questions but he answered them relatively comfortably.

“I gave the matters to the Tribunal confidentially. And they were leaked straight out. That was my only objection,” he said.

It was clear that Mr Kenny did not want to engage in this. And it was also clear that the propensity of the debate would remain well-mannered.

As the debate moved to the most fractious issue, the Taoiseach accepted there were issues in A&E and primary care but put it in the context of huge improvements over ten years.

The debate then moved on the economy. Again the exchanges were technical and detailed. Mr Kenny agreed that the Taoiseach had “presided” over a successful economy but argued that Ireland had lost competitiveness. Ahern again referred to the achievements of his Government. This was home turf for him and he easily dealt with the details. Though Mr Kenny showed himself much improved when it came to specific and tricky questions in this area.

Ahern shaded it on the actual debating points. There can't be any doubt about that. But these debates are also about demeanour, composure and delivery. And Kenny never looked like a politician incapable of taking on the role of Taoiseach. Both will take something from it.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE BIG DEBATE

It wasn't lacklustre. It wasn't boring. Sure, we didn't have the quips of last night or the venom. But it was more muscular and robust than I had thought it would be.

Kenny's performance was very impressive, especially compared to the guy who was wiped by PrimeTime six years ago. He held his own, scored a couple of points, and may have quelled many of the questions surrounding his competence. He also came across as a decent man, less aggressive than Mr Ahern.

But Bertie Ahern edged it. He was put on the back foot every time Miriam O'Callaghan put it to him that the Government was in power for ten years, that we had record resources, but had failed to deliver key promises in health, crime etc. He was particularly uncomfortable on
1. Cystic fibrosis and the fact that the mortality rate is much higher in the Republic than in the North
2. In admitting the mess surrounding John Daly, the prisoner in Portlaoise who made a
Funnily enough, when it came to his personal finances and BertieGate, he dealt with that comfortably - no issue emerged. Of course, he was aided by Kenny who again reciled from getting engaged on this issue.

Where Ahern scored most heavily was on the following matters in order of ranking.

1. Forcing Enda Kenny to give Jim O'Keeffe a public dressing down when he admitted his justice spokesman did not have the correct statistics to hand last week.
2. Successfully planting a seed of doubt over FG's promise to deliver 2,000 extra guards. Is it 1,000 or 2,000? It seems it's 1,000 patched on to 1,000 already committed by this Government. This was a biggie.
3. Bringing up a point raised by Bryan Dobson last week about FG's promise to deliver free health care to under 5s. Ahern argued it would be impossible to implement, something Kenny never rebutted wholly.
4. He also had a fruitful sally at FG's tax plans. Kenny never got round to responding to Ahern's argument that FG's tax reform plans would most favour the richest 3% of voters.
5. He also raised some doubts about the ambivalent costings and time scales of FG's and Labour's plan to provide 2,300 hospital beds. In fairness, Kenny responded strongly with a direct attack on the Government's co-location plans.

Other areas produced mashed or inconclusive results. Both showed themselves capable of drizzling us with stats on the economy without delivering a killer line. Kenny dealt competently with one of his Achiles Heel questions - his lack of experience in Government. He also threw in a bit of Irish at the end which did him no harm at all.



But these debates are not only decided by moot points or small incremental victories. The body language and demeanour, composure, confidence and decency, are also important. And Kenny did come across as an essentially decent man. While he may have lost on a close points decision in my view, there was nothing to suggest that he doesn't have the wherewithal to become Taoiseach.

Earlier in the day, there was talk that Ahern and FF were all at sea and had given up the ghost. This will have galvanised him and those around him. In what is shaping up to be the closest and most determinate elections for a long long time, this was a determined and defiant (at times too aggressively defiant) performance by that may put FF back in the chase.

It was good stuff. From the off. In fact, meatier and more robust than last night. And both leaders, both parties will have taken their positives from it.

But my own opinion remains the same - Ahern shaded it.

INSIDE POLITICS - Donnybrook at Donnybrook

After the Ranelagh Rumble earlier, we had the donnybrook at Donnybrook last night as the four leaders of the parties that aren’t the big two slugged it out in a high-octane TV debate.

This was the undercard but in many ways it was always likely to be a more exciting and bruising dust-up than tonight’s main attraction – the debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny tonight.

For each of the four leaders, Pat Rabbitte (Labour), Michael McDowell (PD), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) and Trevor Sargent (GP)are strong personalities in their own right – and all except Sargent are able debaters.

And in an exchange with personal and nasty moments, it was Rabbitte and McDowell who emerged most strongly – on the the force of their arguments, their ease, and the best lines.

Adams did not lack confidence but lack of mastery on economic issues was exposed a few times – as he was caught waffling. Sargent, not a natural debater, was always going to find it difficult. In the end he held his own without really making a killer point.

But optically, it was terrible for him. The extensive cog notes he had written neatly on the palm of his hands were easily spotted – and will probably dent his marks more than anything he or anybody else said.

The format of the PrimeTime special was simple. Each opened with a statement while bathed in a spotlight. They were then ushered over to a table in turn by presenter Mark Little. The format reminded you of a game show. They even threw in the tense music. The Weakest Link came to mind.

All four were a little nervous and stilted when reading their statement off an autocue.

Michael McDowell immediately continued his row from the afternoon, accusing the Greens of flip-flopping over corporation tax. More scare stuff – the first real row. Sargent sallied back strongly. McDowell had the first good quotable quote: “I’m surrounded by the left (Lab); the hard left (SF); and the left-overs (Greens).

The pattern became obvious early - it was mostly going to be McDowell against the other three.

The second topic was another hot potato one – the Government’s controversial collocation proposal. Here it was McDowell v the rest. Sargent contended it was a “quick fix”. McDowell went in hard.

Second fast quip by Rabbitte, looking more like the Cheshire Cat.

“You are over-energised by that pole you climbed up in Ranelagh,” he quipped.

Little moved it to crime and ASBOS and immigration with McDowell trying to divide the Greens and Labour.

Rabbitte’s second great line: “Michael is like a menopausal Paris Hilton. He is an inveterate attention seeker.”

A few minutes later it started getting personal. When the discussion moved to drugs, he accused Adams of getting E25m from FARC guerrillas in Colombia who are financed by cocaine.

Sargent scored a good point when he said there were only 27 detox beds in the entire State. As did Rabbitte when he said there were more dog wardens than labour inspectors. More insults. Sargent accused McDowell of being hardline and the PDs of being peddlers of despair and deceit. McDowell scored with an argument asking people to imagine what it will be like in three years. Adams returned to a broad republican team.

None let themselves down but Rabbitte pipped it, with McDowell pipping the other two.

from this morning's Irish Examiner

Postscript: Sargent said that he had the notes written down on his palm just in case the autocue went down at the start - in context, it was relatively minor but it would have been better for the notes to have remained hidden from view.

INSIDE POLITICS - DAY ELEVEN

Bertie Ahern's financial woes have disappeared off the radar screen over the past few days and we have returned to what passes for 'normal' business during an election campaign.

There's a huge element of artifice about what happens. Yesterday, we got a classic example of a phoney war; lots of hot air about an issue (corporation tax) where the policies of all parties (even the supposedly radical SF) are ad idem.

Most days during the campaign, all the parties hold briefings. Meanwhile, the Leader's go on manic whirlwind tours of the country where they do silly things firstly on behalf of upholding democracy and secondly on behalf of attracting the attention of the lenses.

RTE yesterday showed a great piece of archive footage from 1969 featuring Longford-Westmeath TD Gerry L'Estrange addressing a crowd outside Mass (in fact RTE has put a lot of fascinating archive material on its website including FF's embrace of American canvassing techniques in 1977; Pat Kenny explaining the use of computers in 1982; and a Liam Cosgrave address from 1973. You can find them all here.)

Nowadays, there are few speeches. It's all to do with the photo op - the most surreal was Pat Rabbitte and Breda Moynihan-Cronin on top of a jarvey in Killarney, bringing the famous Tom Parlon-Mary Harney donkey and cart photo from 2002 to mind.

The party's choose their own particular schtick each day and then try to anticipate what their rivals are going to say. Sometimes you feel like there's a secret coven where they all secretly agree in advance they are going to spar on an issue. At other times, it's more like throwing all the balls in the air and seeing which ones the media pack will catch and then kick.

Today it was health. Fine Gael insisting that the biggest broken promise of all by this Government was its promise to provide 3,000 extra hospital beds (it's part of the health strategy that runs out in 2011). The Government, particularly health minister Mary Harney countered by claiming that the FG proposal to provide an extra 2,300 beds would be impossible to achieve within five years. FG Deputy leader Richard Bruton insisted it would be, said that that FG would prioritise the first €850 million of the €2.6 billon provided for capital health spending in the NDP.

At least there was some meat in this particular sandwich, if you don't mind the distortion of a political metaphor. There are real differences between the two alternative alliances when it comes to health. And at least when you hear the debate there is a little bit more Gerry L'Estrange about it; a little bit less modern political leaders - there is debate and argument and the welcome (figurative) return of the soapbox.

INSIDE POLITICS - VINCENT V BERTIE

It's not the full version or our own Rumble in the Jumble. But this RTE News report gives a great flavour of the exchanges between Vincent Browne and Bertie Ahern.

INSIDE POLTICS - TRULY FRANK?

American pollster Frank Luntz did his second focus-group style exercise for RTE's Week in Politics last night. (follow the link to the show here)

Sure, RTE have thrown a lot of money at it. They brought in their top current affairs lighting cameraman Cecrid Culleton to shoot it in a cool, grainy style, with a constantly moving camera.

But there was way too much going on. Frank Luntz's own introductions and commentaries competed with those of Sean O'Rourke. Luntz tried to work through too many topics (from election-clinching issues to Fine Gael's poster to Brian Cowen's status as putative heir to Bertie Ahern). It gave too little time to give us a chance to really look at Luntz's techniques, or to evaluate them. In addition, the added layer of the three home-grown pundits gave us the unique television phenomenon of having what was already analysed analysed.

Let's fill in a little of the back story here. Political parties have been using focus groups for years as means of ascertaining and identifying the wants, the desires, the gaps, the problems, all the crosses that the long suffering public bear.

So political parties use them as a kind of weather vane. Well, some do, and others learn to rely on them more than their own human and political instincts.

If you read the separate books of two Observer journalists on Tony Blair's New Labour - Andrew Rawnsley's sympathetic 'Servant of the People' and Nick Cohen's scathing 'Pretty Straight Guys' you will get a fair idea how influential focus groups can be. Labour under Blair not only listened to them. Their policies were fashioned, led and tailored by what focus groups were telling them. Focus groups thus inspired policies. Conversely policies were culled because focus groups didn't like them. There's something perverse about a political party being led by the nose on policies. Giving the people want they want, as the legendary American TV news producer Frank Reuben said, is a dope peddler's argument.

And having watched last night's programme, you realised that it wasn't from the wind that Enda Kenny and Michael McDowell got their recent inspirations to big it up on immigration.

There were a couple of aspects to the whole shebang that I found unconvincing. The first is the assumption that political discourse in Ireland doesn't exist unless it's on televison. Terry Prone's otherwise excellent column in this morning's Irish Examiner reinforces this assumption that the election will be won or lost on TV. Of course, television is vital. But there is radio. There are newspapers (people will read and even be influenced by what Terry Prone writes, believe it or not!). And there is the internet, blogs, youtube, bebo etc. Granted, the internet is not the real deal yet as far as Irish electoral poltics are concerned. But it's already a party of the currency in the US - both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama launched their respective campaigns not on TV and not in the press but on their own web-sites. And it will be catching them bang-to-rights in 2012.

People cricially engage as well as emotionally engage. I do do take Terry Prone's point that TV and radio happen in real time, that there's no space for explaining fancy words or abstract concepts.

And that brings me to the second point. The momentary experience. The group was asked to respond to one - or two at the most - sequence(s) featuring polticians. It was a critique of one television performance, expanded into an unsatisfactory show of hands (based on that clip alone) on the worth and wherewithal of that politician.

I'm sorry, but you don't need a dialometer to telly you that Brian Cowen will bore the backside of you when he starts with Department of Finance Bullshit Bingo (and delivers it with all the enthusiasm of a kid who's been given ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys in confession). And you know that Brendan Howlin is never going to stoke up the masses using pretentious words like interdict.

But the problem, as far as this exercise is concerned, is that both have stood and delivered on many other occasions, with punch and pungency. It's like writing off Dublin's All Ireland chances on the basis of their defeat by Tyrone in Croke Park at the weekend. And why for that matter use a short Dan Boyle sound-byte on the environmental aspects of the Budget delivered on the plinth of Leinster House? Why hone in on Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin on health, rather than focusing on the essense of the Sinn Féin message, its stance on the national question? Granted, you have to select what clips you have. Indeed, you have to cut your cloth to suit your measure. But people will ultimately assess parties and personalities in a more complex fashion.

The third niggling feeling I have about focus groups (in general)is this. A disparate group of people are brought together in an artificial setting. Unlike a jury, they never have the time to settle down and get over that initial hump of discomfort and reserve. And often (and as far as I know you could see it here too) the debate is dominated by a couple of individuals. Others, either through reserve or politeness, will tend to row in and agree there and then. But at home later, while standing over the kitchen sink or staring into the fire, they may come to a radically different opinion on an issue or personality. I also think that also explains some of the inbuilt flaws of opinion polls.

Having said all that, it was still an absorbing exercise (as was the first). What Luntz has done is revealed the mysteries of the art to the public, using his own dial technology to make the preferences and prejudices of the groups measurable (and interesting).

Like a self-catalysing enzyme, Luntz himself becomes a player in the process. And with RTE throwing such resources and energy into the programme, it may itself have a measurable influence with the political parties and with voters.

But hold your horses! What Luntz is doing is interesting, eye-opening, important... but ultimately only indicative of trends, of perception, of issues.

As for the latter, there were a couple of bombshells. The first was that not one person in the groupll was a victim of crime (and most said they knew no friend or relatives who were victims). Yet, crime was identified as a huge issue. Why was this? Well, if you look back to the 2002 or 1997 or 1992 or 1989 or 1987 elections, what will you find? The self-same fears and concerns over crime, exactly the same ramping-up of near hysteria by the media (sadly, mostly newspapers) and by politicians. Of course, crime rates are rising and Ireland is a more violent society than it was in the halcyon days of the 1950s. But the perception of fear and or crisis has been cyncially manipulated and exaggerated by politicians and the media.

I must say I was very surprised at the sentiments expressed by some of the group on immigrants. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that people are instinctively conservative about new arrivals, have an innate suspicion of the unfamiliar. But it's not the job of politicians to pander to those fears or prey on them. And while Enda Kenny protests that he was being brave in his recent 'Celtic and Christian' comments, this suggests that he was being populist.

There was a very definite undercurrent from people that they are tired of the government, that they will begrudge giving FF and the PDs another five years in power. But there was an equal perception that the oppostion isn't up to all that much.

It was also surprising to see how little credit was given to the Government for the strong performance of the economy over the past ten years. I believe that when it comes to make-your-mind up time, people will think primarily about jobs, about future security, about which alternative will best guarantee the continuation of the good times. It's the economy stupid. It always is the economy stupid.

And just as an afterword on the changing nature of politics and of political campaigns, here is a video from the amazing slate.com showing how influential YouTube has become in shaping political opinion.

Damian Enlgish, the fast-talking TD for Meath East, told RTE
www.rte.ie/news/morningireland.html
this morning that he's skiing in Andorra. Any snow? asked Cathal Mac Coille. No, said Damian. Just the artificial stuff.
Unexepectedly, and unpleasantly, Damian found wading around knee-deep in some other nasty stuff today. But this was entirely of his own making and Damo, who should have known better, walked right into it.

Sure English is the youngest TD in the Dail. But anyone who knows him will also know that there are no flies on him, that he will be more than able to see off any rivals in his own Meath patch. He would have dispatched Mairead McGuinness, had she interloped in his territory. He will dispatch Graham Geraghty too, and far more subtly that that Aussie Rules bully. But he will dispatch him all the same.

Now Damian can give out about being misquoted in the Indo this morning. But the fact is that he restated exactly what John Deasy said earlier this week: Enda Kenny's leadership would be challenged if Fine Gael did not get into government.
This all stemmed from an interview that Kenny did with the Examiner.
I asked him about his leadership should FG narrowly lose. He gave an answer that was really a demurral. Deasy was asked about the interview on local radio in Waterford and basicaly cited party policy.

But of course there are undertones. Citing party policy is all very well but it also infers conditionality of support. What both Deasy and English raised was the prospect of a FG loss. Does a public airing of the leadership issue before a General Election, undermine confidence and lead to an erosion of public support? Possibly, probably, say FG strategists.

What Deasy and English have said, the will argue, is naive at best, bordering on disloayal at worst.

It didn't help the party one little bit that the person who went on Morning Ireland to defend the party was Shane McEntee, its TD for Meath East. Cathal Mac Coille rightly cut him short the second time he came out with the ludicrous cliche that he was a Meath men and Meath men always think about winning.