John Drennan: Gilmore failing to impose order over Vatican embassy
The belated attempt by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore to impose some order on his "fractious" and "despairing" TDs and senators at a special meeting to be held next Thursday is already beginning to fall apart.
Labour Oireachtas members are growing more alarmed at what they describe as the party's "secularisation by stealth agenda" in the wake of a decision to close the Irish embassy to the Vatican.
They are also vowing to fiercely resist the leadership's "centralising tendencies".
The Tanaiste's move comes against a background of increasing discontent over Mr Gilmore's stance on the closure of the Vatican embassy, which some Labour figures believe is "going to become as messy and divisive as the rod licence dispute was in the Eighties".
In what was described by his own TDs as a "pre-emptive strike" the party chief whip issued a statement last Friday claiming that Labour's back-benchers "firmly backed" Mr Gilmore on the issue.
This stance, however, came as news to a large number of Labour TDs. One source told the Sunday Independent, on condition of anonymity, that the statement was "not true".
One source said that in Labour, "the issue has now gone past the closure of the Vatican. Instead there is an impression that the Labour Party is anti-church''.
This belief is already having serious repercussions on the ground, where last week, at a series of church gate collections for the party, Labour TDs were "getting it in the neck not only from churchgoers but also non-churchgoers who believe the moves are vindictive and unfair".
The position of the leadership has also sparked a severe deterioration of relations between the coalition parties in the wake of virtual unanimity in Fine Gael over re-opening the Vatican embassy. At a meeting recently more than 30 TDs called for a reversal of the decision.
Outside of his own performance, the Labour leader will also have to deal with the scathing views of a growing number of TDs about the capabilities of the Labour wing of the Cabinet. One source noted: "The feeling is that key ministers are being self-indulgent, detached, aloof and inaccessible and Fine Gael is walking all over them."
A growing number of TDs also now believe that: "There has been a takeover by stealth by Gilmore, Ivana Bacik, Ruairi Quinn and Aodhan O'Riordan. They are the ones consistently grabbing the headlines -- the ordinary card-carrying member is horrified."
The under-pressure Labour leader has begun a series of meetings with the party grassroots but, speaking of a recent meeting, one high-profile figure said scathingly, "he simply didn't connect with them".
A large number of younger Labour TDs were also appalled by the "McCarthyite" nature of the language being used about Catholicism.
Speaking privately, one Labour representative contrasted the spectacle of "a Tanaiste slamming the persecution of Coptic Christians in Iran" while elements of his own party appeared to be advocating some sort of "final solution" in Ireland.
Among those who were believed to be particularly infuriated were Colm Keaveney, Ann Phelan, Robert Dowds and Senator John Kelly.
- JOHN DRENNAN
Originally published in
