INSIDE POLITICS - LABOUR CONFERENCE

Eamon Gilmore's biggest problem is the one that Enda Kenny had when he became leader of Fine Gael.

Outside the beltway; outside his own constituency, outside Caltra and East Galway where he grew up (and is fiercely proud of - up Galway!) Gilmore is still an unknown quantity to the public out there.

His speech at the conference this weekend will be vitally important for him. He follows a very high-profile high-personality leader. He has been (unfairly) described as a clone or mini-me of Rabbitte. He has not yet established a national profile; or a 'brand' for himself - if I can use such a crude marketing expression.

And of course it has all been affected by the death of his mother this week, which has delayed his own arrival at the conference until Saturday.

Gilmore has done very well in parliament since becoming leader. He is non showy during the two key sessions of the week - Leaders Questions on Tuesday and Wednesday - and tends to ask Bertie Ahern pointed, sometimes blunt, questions, not giving the Taoiseach that much opportunity to pick the most convenient question to answer.

The main quote attributed to him on the Labour Party website sounds lovely when you say it out... but beyond its vague resonance of Martin Luther Kind does it really mean anything?

"Not only me, but others too; not only here, but elsewhere too; not only today, but tomorrow too."

Unfortunately for Labour, it's always been about tomorrow.

One thing to note about its conference (and I suspect the influence of super-blogger Shauneen Armstrong here) is that it has embraced technology like no other. Ustream, YouTube, flicker, twitter, online Q and A - you name it, it's there. It's going to be more exciting on the screen than it's going to be in real life down in White's Hotel! For more details of all the online stuff, see here.

And just to get in the spirit of things, my own blog will be chugging along on Saturday, and giving instantaneous (ie discount it immediately!) reaction to Gilmore's speech as it happens!

INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE IS FUNNY SHOCKER

Bertie at some function with spooky writing. The video clip is actually very humorous. It's the first time ever that I have heard him being genuinely self-deprecating and making light of it.

INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE IN NEED

I know that there are other things going on in the world but the huge pay hikes are symptomatic of a creeping me-féin attitude and greed in Irish society. There were two excellent pieces on Bertie's pay in this morning's Irish Examiner, written by my colleagues on the political team. One, a sketch, was written by Shaun Connolly who is one of the best colour writers in the business. The other was a fantastic analysis of Bertie Ahern's obsession with money, written by Paul O'Brien. Shaun kindly allowed me to reproduce his piece here:

THE cost to patients of the health service jobs freeze: Unknown.


The cost to taxpayers of Bertie Ahern’s pay rise: €38,000. The comedy value of the Taoiseach’s embarrassing attempts to justify pay rise: Priceless.

As Mr Ahern swaggered down the central steps of the Dáil chamber yesterday to bleat about not having a yacht or butler like his world leader mates he was immediately followed by hapless Transport Minister Noel Dempsey, who was in turn followed by his hapless predecessor Minister Martin Cullen.





It was like a real life version of one those ascent of man graphics showing how we evolved from apes into homo sapiens, except that this was in reverse, and more a representation of the descent of manners from a government that no longer seems to care who it outrages.

Mr Cullen used to be a byword for arrogance and calamity, Mr Dempsey then surpassed his efforts over Shannon and L-plategate, and now the Taoiseach has evolved into the supreme example of self pity fused with a total lack of self awareness.

It’s sooo unfair: Not only do his buddies in Paris and Washington have palaces and yachts, but they get “prolonged holidays” too — this from a man who attends the Dáil for 60 days a year.

Jaws were merely on the floor at this point, they went subterranean with the rest of his self-justifying Tourette’s style outburst, as he stated most of the leaders he is compared with “would not pay for a cup of tea from one end of the year to the other because they have catering staff in their homes and can use jets for social occasions”.

“It would not be hard for a member of the media to write a glowing article about how poverty-stricken we are compared to other countries. I suppose I will have to wait for that,” he moaned.

Erm, yes Taoiseach you will. But haven’t we heard the cup of tea analogy somewhere before? Oh yes, it was at the Mahon corruption probe where Mr Ahern stated he hadn’t been offered the beverage by developers, let alone the £50,000 bribe alleged.

It was an unfortunate memory to drag up, especially as he then went on to attack leaders like the French President for not being “up front” over their finances.

You could almost hear every pot and kettle in a five-mile radius of Leinster House exploding into simultaneous blackness at the remark from a man accused of being, shall we say, evasive, regarding money matters to Mahon.

But we do really need to do something about our underprivileged €310,000-a-year Premier.

Surely it’s time we showed our national gratitude to the sacrifices he has made for us by having a telethon for him — Bertie’s In Need. It will be easy to set up — a quick phone call would panic RTÉ into clearing the schedules.

We would then be spurred on to bung Bertie a few more quid by heartfelt tributes to our Taoiseach in Trouble along the lines of: “I know the economy’s nose-dived since polling day and am resigned to losing a couple of the young ‘uns to the cold and hunger this winter — after all me and the wife can always have more children when the financial situation improves — but I just cannot bear the idea of my Taoiseach going without a butler for one day longer. That is why I have decided to sell my kidneys on the Chinese organ market to raise some cash for Bertie’s In Need — sure, it’s safer than letting the HSE get their hands on them.”

Mr Ahern topped an unforgettable Dáil performance by saying he would “gladly forego” the pay rise, but that would only make page 99 of the newspapers, so what would the point be?

Priceless."

INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE'S PAY AGAIN!

I'm sorry for harking back to pay, but the Man with the Golden Anorak can't resist talking about it. He was asked about his pay increase (see earlier blog entries passim) and came out with the following defence. I have left his words in their raw, pure and undisturbed state, uncontaminated by human hand.


He begins in this passage responding to comments by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny that he earned more than Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown, George Bush and Nicholas Sarkozy.
Note the insinuation that the President of France benefits from opaque - possibly dodgy - arrangements; that the State haven't ponied up a yacht or summer palace for The Anorak; and, ergo, he is "poverty-stricken" compared to the rest.

And this is what he had to say about it in the Dáil today. (I have put the best bits into bold).

The Taoiseach: With regard to the comparisons with French President Sarkozy and others, the Deputy and I know all the arrangements these people have. It is like much of their tax arrangements, as they do not operate a system of transparency. They have all kinds of allowances.

I would like somebody to put all their arrangements up front. Not only do most of these people have permanent and weekend residences but they have holiday residences. They have different rules also as they are the beneficiaries of prolonged holidays, yachts and homes. We do not and should not have those regulations.

Most of the people mentioned by the Deputy would not pay for a cup of tea from one end of the year to the other because they have catering staff in their homes and can use jets for social and other occasions. They are not comparable so we should not do so.


Deputy Bernard J. Durkan: We could make an amendment.

The Taoiseach: It would be interesting to write an article comparing them.

Deputy Finian McGrath: Would the Deputy vote for it?

The Taoiseach: It would not be hard for a member of the media to write a glowing article about how poverty-stricken we are compared to other countries.
I suppose I will have to wait for that.
The review body discounted the comparable salaries in the private sector by 15% to reflect the value of public service increases. I would gladly forego the increase to a future date, as happened before, if I believed it would make a whit of difference but it would probably be reported on page 99 of the newspaper.

The reality is that an independent body examined this and came up with an assessment that we decided to phase in over a period. The 2000 agreement is seven years old, so the increase is less than 3% per annum, with the 7.5% paid to us in the interim period in 2005. We have extended it by two years and it was agreed in the report that the next review would be in four years time. There is an 11 year period, therefore, with one increase. Admittedly it is a large increase, I am not arguing that, but it is an 11 year increase of just under 3% over the seven years. That is the position.

Poor man. No butler. No yacht. No summer palace. No opaque tax wheezes. Just 310 grand a year. And having to buy tea for every Jack Billy in the country.

INSIDE POLITICS - NATIONAL DIGOUT DAY

Thanks to Damien Mulley for this. He send me the link of a grand new site with a grand new idea to initiate a national dig-out day for Bertie, to take place two days after the Budget. Apparently he's going through a hard time politically at the moment and there's nothing that would lift his spirits more than a dig-out this side of Christmas.

The site is http://www.digoutday.com/ and is under construction right now. But if it takes off, it could be made into an annual event!

INSIDE POLITICS - CHARVET ANORAKS

AT THE end of every Dáil term, I tot up the topics that have come up during Leaders Questions — the two slots every week where Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore ask Bertie Ahern a question without giving him notice.


When he’s in the chamber, Ahern has a large volume in front of him indexed A to Z. It’s a mini Bertie encyclopaedia and contains briefings for every imaginable issue that will come up — from crime, to anti-social behaviour, to finances, to house prices, to stamp duty, to nuclear power; to class sizes; to the Taoiseach’s pay; to the bill for Bertie’s make-up.




Yes, these days the Taoiseach is high maintenance. So high maintenance that you sometimes feel that he may have crossed the Rubicon and is now more Charvet shirt than St Bernard anorak. On that subject, let us digress for a second. He was at it again on Thursday, trying to justify his huge pay hike while telling ordinary workers that wage restraint was the order of the day. And when asked to justify his own €38,000 rise, he trotted out the same excuse that it was an independent body and that he hadn’t got a turnip for seven long years (if you forget the nice little interim award of 7.5% they got two years ago). And who wrote the independent body’s terms of reference? Erm, oh yes, the Government.

And so when they met the social partners on Thursday, we had utterly hypocritical posturing from him and from Brian Cowen — the wealthy who have just become even wealthier telling the poor why they must stay poor.

Now back from that side alley onto the main drag of Leaders Questions.

The issue that floats to the top term after term, year after year, is health. It comes up in different guises. You can be sure of one thing. The opposition will always use the word “crisis” and “scandal”. Ahern in his reply will always compare the amount of money his Government have spent on health compared to the Rainbow who preceded it. It is hard to clearly identify when the Rainbow last ruled.

Mediaeval historians place the last signs of that particular civilisation sometime towards the end of the 20th century but we can’t be sure. But it’s still the default comparison for the Taoiseach when unleashing a drizzle of statistic.

Traditionally, Ahern has responded to the barbs of the opposition in a very clever way. He will know that they have offered him a choice of questions so he’ll chose the ones that most suit. He will read out verbatim the brief written for him by a civil servant.

If there’s explaining to do, he will do it but in that unique smokes and daggers way of his that makes everything as clear as mud. And he will deliver it in that reasonable, sotto voce tone of his. It’s not pretty on the ear but it’s deft and has served him well.

There’s been a theory doing the rounds of Leinster House for the last couple of months, however, that his demeanour has changed, has hardened, that he has become arrogant and aloof. He has won his third election now and doesn’t care any more. There’s nothing more to prove electorally. All that matters is retaining the loyalty of his party, to hang on until it’s time to go.

Tony Blair underwent such a transformation in his third term. He changed from the politician who was eager to please everybody to the one who realised that wasn’t possible.

Since May, there’s been little evidence of the famous anorak. The arrogance began in the RTÉ studios on the night of victory and is still evident. Little niggling things are being said about him that were not said before — that he is obsessed with money and wealth; that he has become imperious; that he increasingly out of touch with real people.

He was certainly damaged during the Tribunal and he badly dropped the ball over provisional licences. His defence of the pay rise was indefensible. But the thing that really bolstered the notion for me was his performance at Leaders Questions on Wednesday.

Now maybe Eamon Gilmore provoked him by mentioning the unmentionables, Doctors John Crown and Maurice Neligan. What stood out from his response was his attack on the two medics and his jibe that one of them made more money than him. What had that to do with women who have just learned the horror of a misdiagnosis? There was no empathy. It was somebody else’s fault; not his.

In the past, that would not have happened. The apology would have been made within seconds. He has either lost his common touch or has become deeply complacent. Bertie’s become high maintenance with all the attitude to go with it.

This is my column from this morning's Irish Examiner

INSIDE POLITICS - BROWN NOSE (Literally)

Bertie Ahern had a pretty torrid day in the Dáil today. His response to the scandal of the misdiagnosed cancer tests in Portlaoise was to accept zero responsibility, say he was not responsible for 120,000 workers in the Health services and take a couple of swipes at consultants who he said were paid even more money than he was.
He made a couple of decent points that strongly suggested human error rather than systems error and improvements in oncology services generally.
But his difficult was that the bitterness swelled up to swamp everything.
Still, it wasn't quite as embarrassing for him as this video of Gordon Brown (Carl O'Brien alerted me to it today)
For those of a sensitive disposition, it's not an edifying sight!

INSIDE POLITICS - PAY RISE

I thought it was only me banging on about the unconscionable pay rise paid to the State's top brass, who have now established themselves as fully-fledged members of the new 'landed classes'.

But it's what we call in the newspaper game as a story with legs. It just won't go away. Two Ministers came out and sounded windy about it at the weekend. And yesterday Bertie Ahern tried to put paid to the dispute with an amazing display of verbal gymnastics - it was all "smokes and daggers" he declared in a classic Bertieism.

But there's been a dishonesty to the way the Government has responded to the criticism. They say it's the first award in seven years. It isn't. An interim award worth7.5& was made two years ago. So the c 15% that Ahern and Cowen and all got was on top of 7.5% they got two years ago.

And the utterly misleading impression was given too that it was the first pay rise they have got in seven years. TDs and Ministers have got EVERY pay rise that's been going, all the national pay awards, benchmarking the lot.

Richard Bruton pointed out yesterday that Bertie Ahern's income has risen by 50% in the past four years (and as a point of fact, it has risen 133% since he came into office). And don't get me started on pensions. The pension bill for the public service is going to screw all other taxpayers by the middle of this century.

I was on Matt Cooper's The Last Word on Today FM with Richard Bruton of Fine Gael. Matt pressed Richard to say what an appropriate salary level for the Taoiseach should be. He refused to go there. But I'll posit a figure - €200,000 would be extremely generous and relatively non controversial.

And that figure should also apply to top civil servants, judiciary, the gardai and the lot. What's happened to the notion of public service? It's all about money nowadays. Greed is poisoning our society.

INSIDE POLITICS - CABINET ARTICULATE PAY RISE

I have just come across the video in which various senior ministers justify why they are now worth €240,000 a year.

INSIDE POLITICS - THAT PAY AWARD

UPDATE
Bertie Ahern was doorstepped asbout this today and was totally unrepentant.
Pay rise was wholly justified was this theme.

In his eyes, the only thing that was jarring was the fact that it was seven years and that made it seem big in the eyes of the public. So in future, he would like to see it every three years so the increases won't be seen to be too gargantuan.

By the way, he forgot to mention that there was an interim award of 7.5% two years ago.

Or that if the Dept of Finance hadn't insisted on a reduction in pay award because of gold-plated pension, his increase would have havee 30% or over E70,000.

Oh and he threw in a Bertieism for good measure. When asked would he defer it, he said no, explaining it in these terms:

"They're really only playing smokes and daggers with it."

This isn't a conventional pay rise by the way.

This is a review by mostly wealthy business people that determines whether our public fat cats are keeping pace with the private sector fat cats.
The fact is that in a period of a decade Bertie Ahern's salary has increased by 133%.
That is a fact.

Greed, after all, is good.

INSIDE POLITICS - PAYBACK TIME

Is it going to be payback time, literally? Bertie Ahern doesn't want to forfeit the extra 38 grand. But a couple of Ministers have been sounding a little peevish and watery about getting another massive rake of cash on top of all the perks, money and extras they have got over recent years.

And it's not just the politicians. It's the entire top brass.Secretaries General (Grade 1) of Government Department will all be getting €303,000, as will Supreme Court Judges, CEOs of semi states, with a whole second tier of judges, technocrats, Semi State bods, university heads getting humongous wage levels. The plain truth is that we are more prosperous now but STILL a small country, and such largess is unjustified. An independent body it may technically be but it is composed mostly of very wealthy people from the private sector - there is one workers' representative from the Labour Court. For them big six figure salaries are (excuse the mixed metaphor) ten a penny.

And what's galling is that they are all entitled to gold-plated pensions that are inured to the winds of change. And secretary generals will also be entitled to bonuses up to 20% of their salaries for 'exceptional' performance, whatever that is. And will they get docked pay for making a blunder or for under-perforimg? Umm, I thing we have a negative on that one!

Eamon Ryan didn't do well this morning under a fusillade of questions from Cathal Mac Coille on Morning Ireland (hear the interview here). And the rumour is that the Cabinet is now going to indulge in a bit of tokenism and defer the pay rise for a couple of months, and then reintroduce it when the furore has died down.

Sadly, I wouldn't expect any of the opposition parties to do any better. The greed at the top reflects wider society. Who's going to protest about it? No politician will, that's for sure! Who else? The vested interests involved are the most powerful in the country! Who has the will and the wherewithal to do it? Anybody who has is going to be way outside the golden circle.

There are sectors in Irish society where salaries are vastly inflated. Executive pay in business is crass. Barristers and consultants at the top of their professions command obscene fees that are grotesquely out of proportion with Ireland's size and position in the world (for reference, return to home truth speech made by the German Ambassador to Ireland). And no matter how consultants try to dress it up, one of their number did described a €200,000 plus salary as "Mickey Mouse money".

I'll just finish by quoting two paragraphs from Polly Toynbee's excellent column in the Guardian last Tuesday on pay profligacy (being Toynbee, they are two very long paragraphs!.

Out of control top pay in the private sector should matter to the Treasury because it infects the public sector. Why is the cabinet secretary now paid considerably more (£220,000) than the prime minister (£187,000)? It's a plum prestige job that needs no bribery, and leads to rich jobs afterwards. Does the chief executive of Bradford need more than the PM? Bringing private sector people in now infects public pay scales, as lower ranking arrivals on £300,000 report to permanent secretaries on £170,000. (However there is plainly a rare genuine market for head of the nuclear decommissioning authority: no one applied for this toxic chalice at £80,000 so it's now been advertised at £200,000). But being director general of the BBC is not toxic: everyone wants it, so why pay a total package of £788,000 - let alone cabinet minister rates for scores of middling BBC managers? (And couldn't they take a pay cut in sympathy with those about to lose their jobs?) Sir John Bourn's downfall is a classic example of how private excess makes public people lose their financial bearings.
For Labour to refuse to give any leadership on this is an incomprehensible lacuna: the national psychology of pay affects everyone. Yesterday the government set up a new child poverty unit: Ed Balls and Peter Hain, the two ministers involved, know their 2010 half-way mark to abolishing child poverty will be missed by miles on its present trajectory. Barnardo's are joining in - but their director, Martin Narey, wonders what they can do with no extra money. Only 48p a week extra went to child tax credits this year, subsidising low-paid jobs. The bigger question is this: how can Labour ever abolish child poverty if they dare not face down the underlying forces fracturing pay scales all the way through and accelerating the country into ever greater inequality?

The selfsame argument can be made in Ireland.

INSIDE POLITICS - THAT OPINION POLL

The latest opinion poll tells us that Fianna Fail is on the way out and if we are patient enough to wait out the other 1,500 days between now and the next General Election, we can collectively wave them goodbye.

In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.

Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).

It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.

It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.

There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.

When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.

The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.

Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.

A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).

So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.

A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.

But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.

I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.

Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREENS AND CIVIL PARTNERSHIP

This is an article I wrote for this morning's Examiner. The Green's chief spokesperson took issue with it and made a fair point (which I partly agree with) that the article was too cyncial and lacked historical perspective (I didn't sufficiently recognise the Gulliver-like leap that FF agreement and Cabinet commitment to this legislation means).
Anyway here it is...


To understand how big the Green Party’s change of tack on same sex marriage was this week, we have to go back to what Marx said about principles.
“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.”
Ok, we are being very cynical here. It was the slightly less heavyweight Marx, Groucho, who made the above comment.
But it was clear from the debate in the Dáil about same sex partnership this week that pragmatism won out over principle for the Green Party.
It is understandable. In Government, they have six TDs compared to 78 for Fianna Fail. And all of the usual drawbacks of being a minor coalition partner apply. You can only punch so much above your weight. You are not going to win every battle. You have to choose your moment. Compromise is the name of the game. Sometimes you have to swallow hard.
And the Greens have taken a couple of big hits – as they and we always knew they would – since they entered coalition with Fianna Fail and the PDs earlier this year. They had to bow to the vast strength of FF when it came to road-building; to the M3; to the Rossport terminal; and to incineration (though John Gormley is trying to fight a fierce rearguard battle that may or may not prevent Poolbeg from being built).
The light wouldn’t need to be glowing too brightly in the attic to realise that a very liberal party like the Greens would find it difficult to argue for legislation (and constitutional change) that would put same sex unions on a par with marriage. The broad brush of opinion within FF would consider that a step (and think of a step taken by Gulliver) too far. It was never going to happen.
The Greens managed to get a commitment into the Programme for Government on same sex unions. But that was for civil partnership. And that doesn’t stack up to marriage. It’s more to do with recognising succession rights, social welfare rights, tax arrangement and arrangements when such unions come to an end. This more minimalist approach fell short of the full equality sought by the partner.
Realpolitik dictated that this was going to be the case, that a compromise would e cobbled together.
Sure, they would take a hit. But that’s the nature of being a coalition partner.
But the optics of what happened this week was that the Greens panicked and walked straight into a neat ambush prepared by the Labour Party.
The party’s constitution spokesperson Brendan Howlin this week used his party’s private members time to table a Civil Union Bill, which ostensibly gave gay couples the right to solemnise the relationship, to put them on a distinct but equal footing with heterosexual marriage.
The huge political difficulty for the Greens was that Howlin was merely retabling a motion which he first introduced in the Dáil last February.
And then, the Greens were unstinting in their praise and admiration for Deputy Howlin’s Bill. Its justice spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe compared it to Rosa Louise Parks’s refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man 50 years ago.
At the time, he said: “To relegate same-sex couples to some marriage-like institution is to deny them their human rights, dignity and rights as citizens of the State. We would like to introduce legislation that would go further and permit the removal of all gender specific terms from current legislation and regulations governing the granting of marriages.
“This would allow same sex couples to enjoy the equivalent rights and responsibilities of marriage afforded to heterosexual couples, should they so chose.”
And there was more: He said the Constitution was stuck in the sleepy backwaters of the 1940s, and does not recognise families other than those based on marriage.
Tactically, it was a smart move for Labour to re-table the motion as it was sure to embarrass the Greens. To employ a Healy-Raeism there wasn’t a chance in the wide earthly worlds that FF were going to buy into it.
If the answers were gay marriage and a constitutional referendum, the question had to be: “What would FF not go anywhere near in a month of Sundays.”
And politically, the optics were bad for the Greens this week. Instead of taking the flak full in the face (everybody expects that they would have to do that over the issue) we got promise of a new Civil Partnership Bill that seemed to have been hastily cobbled together.
Green Party leader John Gormley and Justice Minister Brian Lenihan appeared with little warning in the political correspondents’ room in Leinster House to announce they would be legislating for civil partnership.
But two words came to mind about their counter-motion. The first was ‘back’; the second was ‘envelope’. There were no written proposals. There was a couple of nebulous references to adopting recommendations of groups like Colley, an Oireachtas committee and the Law Reform Commission. And there was a promise that the heads, or scheme, of the Bill would be published next March.
It all had a rushed feel to it. And because of that, it made the contrast between the relatively feeble measures it contained and the brave words of Ciaran Cuffe last February all the more glaring.
The Green Party accepted Lenihan’s argument that the Labour Bill would be open to constitutional challenge. But in accepted there would be no legislation for same sex marriage and no prospect of a constitutional referendum.
Ciaran Cuffe gamely went on Morning Ireland and – in his scrupulously honest way – conceded that what was on offer was less than he desired.
“There is a difference between proposing while in opposition and enacting while in Government,” he said.
But still, Gormley’s comments that it was a historic decision seem a little hollow. The Greens seemed to be reacting rather than leading the charge – and they will need to do far more of the latter if they are to survive their coalition with the wiliest and slickest operators in Irish politics.

INSIDE POLITICS - NO BRAINER OF THE WEEK

Some weeks you find yourself scratching around for fodder for the weekend column. Mostly it goes something like this: what the hell am I going to write about this week? Should I gratuitously attack The Anorak for no good reason again (that's a joke by the way)or do another organ-grind of my favourite gripe that there are too many of them; that they're all over-paid; and that as our State has evolved, their main function has increasingly become to look after their own interests. There's an actual committee (chairman gets paid an extra 20 grand) called 'Members' Interests'. That for me says it all!

But not this week, like manna from Heaven, like the fatted calf for the prodigal son, like the loaves and the fish, the Irish Times opinion poll landed on our laps this morning.

Sure, there are only 1,500 shopping days or so until the Next Election. But this was telling in its own way.

The figures have been parsed elsewhere this morning (see the Irish Times main article here) Polls are crude instruments of measure at the best of times. What they are very good at doing though is recording big falls and big rises of support for the main parties.
So the rises for Fine Gael (+4) and Labour (+5) are significant as is the whopping nine point drop for FF.

The reasons for this: the debacle over provisional driving licences; the cynical pay rises they all accepted last week; and a first public verdict on Bertie Ahern's extraordinary account of his dabblings in international monetary exchanges.

The most interesting thing is that Ahern's own stock has fallen sharply. And what complicates this is that the Times decided to include the anointed one, Brian Cowen, in among the leaders for the first time. I spoke to a FF insider for whom I have a lot of respect last night who said that he was suspicious of the Times's motives in including Cowen and that it was deliberately throwing a cat among the pigeons.

But that's not really fair. Cowen is widely accepted as the heir to the throne and it's always good to get the public verdict on his performance.

The Greens? Holding up. Gormley will will be happy with his rating. 5% is what they got in the election. Their support rose up to near 10% on a couple of occasions but ultimately that was meaningless.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREENS MEANS COMPROMISE

Well, as the saying goes, you say tomato, I say total and abject capitulation.

Us political hacks were roused out of mid-afternoon somnolence yesterday to be told that John Gormley and Brian Lenihan would be over to brief us on something significant.

And what was it? A new proposal to legislate for civil partnerships.

If you weren't as hard bitten and cynical as us, you would say: great. That's a fantastic breakthrough.

But there's a fly in the ointment!

And it's this:

Last February, the Labour Party tabled a Bill that would make civil unions between homosexual couples legal.

The Green Party enthusiastically endorsed it, with its justice spokesperson Ciaran Cuffe backing it to the hilt (listen to Cuffe's interview on Morning Ireland here)

In fairness to them the Greens also got a commitment into the Programme for Government. But the more hesitant FFers insisted that the phraseology be civil partnership rather than civil union.

The difference is important. A civil partnership can never be considered the equivalent of gay marriage - it will never be on a part with heterosexual marriage will will retain its preeminence in the Constitution.

Civil partnership is certainly a massive improvement on what we have at present. It will allow the legal rights of partners to be recognised by law (including succession rights and a possible share of assets). Forms of life partnerships other than homosexual ones will also be recognised.

But the manner in which it was all rushed through last night smacked of a little panic (though Green handlers were blue in the face last night saying that the party's programme manager Donal Geoghegan has been working on it since last September).

Tactically, it was a clever little move by the Labour Party. By retabling a motion that the Greens backed so solidly last February, they were calling the junior coalition party's bluff.

Would the Greens have to vote against a Bill they backed only last February and face more embarrassing taunts of sell-out and capitulation?

Did they have any choice but to pressure the senior partners to come up with something that would give them comfort?

The Government's own proposals (yep, they have been working on it since last September) were delivered orally by Brian Lenihan and John Gormley and were so vague that two words came to mind. One was 'back'. The other was 'envelope'. Heads of Bill by next March. Legislation by the end of this term. Proposals saying they would take account of the plethora of reports that have been produced in recent years.

All it was was a reiteration of the Programme for Government commitment with a couple of bells and whistles.

You need to be careful about the optics. This will be perceived as a reactive measure rather than something they came out with themselves. The Greens can't always be responding. They need to begin to assert their own agendas.

Otherwise it's going to pan out as a series of ass-saving exercises.

INSIDE POLITICS - DEEP INSIDERS

There are three political correspondents' rooms in Leinster House, all at the top of the House. The Indo and RTE are in one room; the Times and TV3 in the second and the third room is the Craggy Island one - housing us from the Examiner, the Irish Daily Mail, one half of the Sunday Business Post political team and the Sunday Times.

Well, we in the third room were given the bum's rush out of Leinster House last week. The floor in our room was collapsing (yep, all those porkie pies!) and the Office of Public Works Engineer told us that we had to get out by the end of the week.

We are now on the fourth floor of a (relatively) modern office block behind the Kilkenny Design shop on Nassau Street. It takes about six minutes to get to the chamber from here. But for all the world we could be at the North Pole. We are completely isolated.

The reporters from the different papers were in different rooms but were on the same floor. And contiguity is important; for briefings; for co-ordination and to keep your antennae up to pick up vibes that your rivals might have a story that you haven't. Missing a trick (and then getting a kicking from the editor) is the greatest fear and motivator of all journalists!

We felt a bit like the hind rump when shifted last week. But then the OPW condemned the entire floor. It means that all political correspondents are now to be shifted outside of the Leinster House campus.

This is going to be difficult for some of our colleagues. And naturally there are worries that once we are all out of Leinster House, we will stay out.

INSIDE POLITICS - WOODSIE'S 75 GRAND

Senan Moloney in the Indo this morning got one of the details wrong (the amount) but it was still a cracking story. Retiring Ministers had to claim their pensions within six months or else they could only claim from the time of their first claim. Obviously, Woodsie missed his deadline. By how much? A couple of months? Or a couple of years? Anyway the helpful section inserted by Brian Cowen into a totally separate Bill (one that regulates money markets) has solved all that for the Minister for Education since his retirement in 2002.

Really, is there any length that politicians won't go to to make sure they're all looked after. And when it comes to pensions, there is always a muted response from the opposition. I wonder why!

INSIDE POLITCS - GREED IS GOOD FOR BERTIE AND CO

Below is my Irish Examiner column from this morning. As you can guess, I'm utterly outraged at the generous pay rises awarded to Ministers, judges, Garda and army top brass, and civil servants. Bertie Ahern was interviewed yesterday and was implacable and 100% unapologetic.

He threw in a couple of red herrings about the White House and Chequers but he's the leader of a country of 4 million people, not of 250 million or 60 million. At least he's not yet as bad as the leadership in Singapore ($3.1 million annual salary) but almost as bad. The greed of our politicians - and their lust for money - is breath-taking.

People shouldn't accept this. Somebody should take a stand against this naked money-grabbing.

Incidentally, Stephen Collins over in the Irish Times wasn't too happy about it either. You can see his column here (subscription). He extends the argument to talk about the unbelievably generous pay and pension and expenses packages that all politicians get.

There's no other way to describe it: it's a disgrace.

Anyway, here is the column:


It hasn’t been a bad week for Government. This Government just doesn’t have bad weeks.

They can be caught in the act, bang-to-rights, up to their neck in it, red-handed, with all their fingers stuffed into the cookie jar.

The first thing that happens in such a situation is they forgive themselves.

The second thing that happens is the public forgives them, gives them general absolution every five years.

And so this hasn’t been a bad week for Government. Nor for the permanent Government (the civil service). But it’s been a very bad week for politics.

Ten days ago Tánaiste and Finance Minister Brian Cowen held a pre-Budget briefing in Government Buildings where he gave an updated version of Haughey’s famous 1980 speech that ‘we were living beyond our means’.

Ok, it’s not that dramatic or that dire yet. But Cowen intoned in dull serious tones: “It is clear from this scenario that the position is very tight. Given this position

I will focus on ensuring a sustainable financial position as we move into the future.”

Yep tight. Those middle and low-ranking civil servants would have to trim their sails when it came to benchmarking, he warned. And on departmental spending, he boldly declared that there would be no “double digit increases” this year.

Except for himself and for Bertie Ahern. Double digit increases are the order of the day too for all their Cabinet colleagues. Cowen gets a 15% increase that brings his salary up to E270,000. And his boss gets an incredible E38,000 increase to make him just about the highest paid political leader in Europe. It’s enough to allow him – like an Arab Sheikh –have bespoke anoraks with gold thread.

And the standard excuse. It was an independent review body. Yea, sure. I’ll guarantee you one thing. The review body is never ever going to recommend a pay cut.

It has a grand sounding title – Review Body on Higher Remuneraton – but it is no judge and jury. This is a body that is given riding instructions and terms of reference and will come to the task with its own preconceived ideas.

And it benchmarks public servants and politicians against private business. There is one major difference. Civil servants don’t get the heave-ho if they underperform or don’t reach targets.

And why aren’t our politicians benchmarked against other politicians in Europe, and not against entrepeneurs and executives involved in the cut and thrust of business?

If they want private sector salaries let them go into the private sector. Public service, serving the people, should not be about the money. Some might have taken exception to the candid home truths expressed by the German ambassador. But I and a lot of other people believed he was spot on? Is Ahern worth more than Gordon Brown? Is he worth more than Angela Merkel? Is he worth more than Nicolas Sarkozy. No, no, and no. But this Government, and especially the politician at its head, are obsessed with money and wealth.

This might surprise you but the Cabinet this week adopted the recommendations of the review body. That was big of them.

Now that might seem like the bitter word but there is an important principle at stake here. Our over-represented and over-paid political class have always had a knack of being insulated from the cold winds of hardship to which the rest of us are periodically exposed. The cardinal principle of politics in Ireland is to feather your own nest first before turning your attention to others.

And that extends to the civil service too, where senior officials got another grand hike in pay this week. And the quid pro quo? A lot of over nebulous performance indicators.

And there is no better example than this of the debacle over the Shannon Heathrow slots. On foot of records released to the Irish Examiner under an FOI request it emerged that senior officials in the Department of Transport were aware as early as June that Shannon’s Heathrow slots were vulnerable but failed to inform the Minister.

The Minister than got the top civil servant in Transport Julie O’Neill to draw up a report.

Gobsmacked is a pretty tame description of our reaction on Thursday night when we all found out that the star of Julie O’Neill’s report was Julie O’Neill herself.

When the famous ‘Memo for the Minister’s Information’ surfaced a couple of weeks ago on foot of the Irish Examiner’s FOI request, neither she nor John Murphy could remember the memo or any of the events surrounding the memo.

But then when they began to retrieve emails – including deleted ones – it emerged that John Murphy had sent her versions of that very email not once but twice on June 14. And that on foot of the second email she had contacted John Sharman, the chairman of Aer Lingus, such was the urgency of the situation.

Seemingly, the Secretary General says that Sharman’s reassurance was such that the Shannon slots were put on the back burner, So reassuring that a collective amnesia overtook the whole Department as if the possibility of Shannon losing its slots had never arisen. And then like a bolt out of the blue it happened. It was Julie O’Neill’s Bertie-esque moment.

Noel Dempsey is a politician for whom I have a lot of admiration. But his bland Pontius Pilate comments that they had apologised and we should all move on isn’t good enough. We were here before with nursing home charges.

Why were recommendations of the Travers report ignored by senior civil servants in Transport? Why were key conversations on matters of political sensitivity not noted down in writing? Why was the DAA desperate enough about the situation to be looking at ways of incentivising Aer Lingus to keep at least one slot in Shannon on June 14? And why was it all suddenly dropped the very next day on June 15? What exactly did John Sharman say to Julie O’Neill? And how could she and John Murphy recall nothing four months later of the flurry of emails, memos and phone calls made on June 14?
The only way the Minister can move this on is by granting a full and frank independent report.

OUTSIDE POLITICS - THAT TV AD

This is the kind of fun you can have on the bus on the way home. It's brilliant.

INSIDE POLITICS - SPLITS, PAY AND FEUDS

1. SPLITS
Saddo that I am, I was looking through the Programme for Government this morning (available at the Department of the Taoiseach here)to ascertain the details of the agreed policy on waste between the two parties.

This followed the so-called '2-4-6-8 what do we incinerate' split between the Government parties. Now John Gormley still says there is no conflict between himself and Bertie Ahern on incineration. But any reading of the Bert's contribution to the Dáil yesterday (and I know - sometimes it's hard to know what he's saying) would have to conclude that he is saying that four will be needed, not two.

The problem for Gormley is this. Planning applications for four incinerators are in the process and he can't turn back the clock on those. What he is doing is trying to fight a rearguard action that pushes all the alternatives hard and reduces the incentives for incineration to such an extent that promoters will walk away from it.

Instead, Gormley is stressing a higher recycling rate (50%) and the introduction of MBT facilities (Mechanical Biological Treatment). Now there is a commitment in the Programme for Government on MBT but critically there is no target date. The review of waste policy by international consultants will not start until the beginning of next year and take a year. Realistically, its going to take until way after 2012 before the all of these facilities are up and running.

A lot of the Greens input into the programme for government have either no dates or very long run-in times. They have already taken so many hits on compromise that they will need to show a whole lot of tangibles... and soon. (For my read on it from RTE's DriveTime yesterday click here

2. PAY
See my rant from yesterday on this. The details of pay awards for Taoiseach, Ministers and higher civil servants is being announced today. If they are sizable in any way, expect a whole lot of flak because it flies in the face of everything that Brian Cowen has been saying over the past couple of weeks.

That wonderful old phrase comes to mind: feathering their own nests.

*

3. FEUDS
In Ireland's multi-seat constituencies, the most heated rivalries of all are between so-called constituency colleagues. Witness the spats between the three FF TDs in Cork North West and the Fergus O'Dowd versus Mairead McGuinness battle in Louth. But none match the intensity or enmity between the two Fianna Fail TDs in Cork East. Below is my story about it from this mornings Irish Examiner:

The battle will go down in history as The Battle of the Tearoom, the latest episode in the longstanding, and poisonously bitter, feud between two prominent Fianna Fail TDs.
Junior minister Michael Ahern and former junior minister Ned O’Keeffe are ostensibly constituency colleagues in Cork East.
But the enmity between the two men is well known and catalogued. There have been a number of altercations, including one incident during the 2007 election campaign.
Constituency rivalries are one thing but as one other FF TD said yesterday, Ahern and O’Keeffe are involve din internecine warfare.
“These guys are the most bitter of rivals. There’s massive tension between the two characters. There’s nothing quite like it in Irish politics.”
The latest incident occurred yesterday morning, ironically around the same time as the Government was releasing its latest crime figures. The ‘action’, such as it was, happened near the door of the self-service restaurant when both men happened to arrive at the same time to get a cup of tea.
What is clear is that Michael Ahern addressed Ned O’Keeffe. The two men have not been on speaking terms for a long time and Mr O’Keeffe took exception to what Mr Ahern said. It led to an intense verbal altercation between the two men, a schemozzle of insults that lasted no more than 30 seconds, according to Pat The Cope Gallagher who was also present.
What exactly occurred after that is open to dispute. Ned O’Keeffe claimed that Michael Ahern pushed him. The Irish Examiner understands that that claim was strenuously denied by Ahern. Gallagher said that there was no physical dimension to it, other than one of the TDs (Mr Ahern) placing his hand on the shoulder of the other (Mr O’Keeffe).
The upshot was that Mr O’Keeffe made a complaint to the Superintendent of the Oireachtas, Commandant Paul Conway and also complained to Government Chief Whip Tom Kitt.
Mr Kitt later said that he had spoken to a number of people who were present when the incident took place, including the two protagonists.
“I am formally of the view, and my assessment, is that all that was involved was an exchange of words, he said.
Because he believed there was no physical aspect, he said he was not going to take the matter any further.
“I will advise both of them to avoid the possibility of such a situation arising again.”