Martina Devlin: Fine Gael and Labour do a great impression of FF
AN ALARMING make-over has taken place and partly explains why the Government's honeymoon is well and truly finished: it's had a facelift and seems determined to impersonate Fianna Fail.
This copycat act shows up in various ways, including the instinct to reward failure with promotion and to use Europe as Landfill Grand Central for senior people who have outlived their usefulness.
Fianna Fail shunted Charlie McCreevy off to Brussels, while the present Coalition is hell-bent on transferring Kevin Cardiff to Luxembourg.
Fianna Fail rewarded the faithful with public appointments, while the present Coalition is up to the same tricks -- all five new judges named recently turned out to have close connections with one or other of the government partners.
Fianna Fail high-handedly told the electorate it must pass various referenda without bothering to explain them -- the present Coalition tried a similar stunt with that referendum on additional inquiry powers for the Oireachtas.
Some days it feels as if the Soldiers of Destiny remain in charge. If Enda appears in canary-yellow trousers on dress-down Friday, we'll know for sure it's Groundhog Day.
I'm mystified why Irish governments actively seek a reputation for offloading their problem children on to Europe. Now is no time for Euroscepticism.
Michael Noonan's insistence that he stands over Mr Cardiff's nomination to the European Court of Auditors smacks of Nanny Knows Best -- and don't question nanny's decisions.
Apparently Mr Cardiff was approved unanimously by the Cabinet, which leaves me anxious about the quality of debate there.
Three MEPs from among the coalition partners have already tried to signal which way the wind is blowing, but Mr Kenny won't listen to their weather forecast. Fine Gael's Sean Kelly, in particular, shows independence of thought, noting that if Europe rejects Mr Cardiff it will damage Ireland's already battered reputation.
We cannot slough off our rejects on to Europe. Especially not someone whose track record at the Department of Finance is questionable.
Other disturbing symptoms of the Fianna Fail disease materialised last week when three new District Court judges were appointed.
All three had political associations. It was a pattern set by two appointments to the High Court in October: one had political and personal links to Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, the other was a Fine Gael donor and son-in-law to a former party minister.
These positions are awarded on merit, since the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board nominates a shortlist of candidates from which the Government makes its selection. But they create an impression of Fianna Fail's 'jobs for the boys' approach.
So much for the new administration that voters imagined was being elected in February. Fine Gael and Labour are stealing Fianna Fail's clothes.
But let's get back to Mr Cardiff. He was head of banking at the Department of Finance on the night of the 2008 blanket bank guarantee. Not his finest hour. Yet our current Government continues to back him for Europe.
He was on the team that set up NAMA. Yet our current Government continues to back him for Europe.
Promoted to secretary general, he was a key figure in negotiating last year's IMF/EU bailout. Yet our current Government continues to back him for Europe.
A €3.6bn double counting error was uncovered on his watch, indicative of a systemic failure in his fiefdom. Yet our current Government continues to back him for Europe.
Is a financial genius waiting in the wings to replace him at the Department of Finance? Or does the Government simply want rid of Mr Cardiff?
I should think Europe is smarting still over a previous Trojan horse from Ireland: Mr McCreevy. Not only did his tenure attract criticism, but when he retired from the European Commission he joined a banking firm's board despite the conflict of interest. He had to be told, in no uncertain terms, by a European ethics committee that it was a non-runner.
Mr McCreevy was finance minister during a crucial seven-year period from 1997 to 2004, when he was a consistent advocate of light-touch regulation and tax cuts, introduced in conjunction with public spending hikes. Against advice from the Department of Finance, he extended Section 23 tax breaks to the Shannon region. Ghost estates number among his legacies.
Let's consider just one of his budget giveaways. In 2001, Mr McCreevy announced that all over-70s, regardless of means, would be entitled to medical cards. The secretary general of the Department of Health and Children told the Comptroller and Auditor General he knew about it just a few days before Budget Day. The decision was taken without proper costing.
The initial estimate suggested 39,000 people would become eligible at a cost of €19m -- a woefully inaccurate analysis. In fact, two years later it emerged that 77,000 were entitled to cards at a cost of €55m.
Any finance minister who behaved with such contemptuous disregard for the public purse should be sacked. Instead, Mr McCreevy stayed for three years before being dispatched to another plum post.
Indeed, by one of those curious twists, it was Mr McCreevy who recommended former Supreme Court judge Hugh O'Flaherty as Ireland's representative to the European Investment Bank -- a nomination that was withdrawn following a public outcry.
Mr Justice O'Flaherty, you may recall, had to resign over his intervention in the Sheedy affair, in which a drunk driver who killed a woman was freed early from prison.
And Mr Cardiff is our latest gift to Europe. A gift it may choose not to accept.
The fundamental question for Ireland today is how much money it has borrowed; exactly how that figure is reached matters greatly. Clearly, the Department of Finance's totting-up methods are flawed, which undermines Ireland's credibility.
Mr Cardiff did not make the accounting mistake but it was compounded by a systemic error, and he presides over the system that let it happen. For that we pay him €200,000 a year plus perks.
Now we have a Government busy pretending there is nothing dysfunctional about waving him off to Europe -- to an important position he has already dismissed, rather insultingly, as a "dawdle" compared with his current role.
If the Government believes a senior civil servant is not up to the job, it ought to pension him off. After which, Enda, you might sack the stylist -- Fianna Fail is not a good look.
Irish Independent
