MEDIA REPUBLIC . . . VARADKAR, BRUTON AND KENNY LEAVE COALITION MEDIA STRATEGY IN CHAOS

SOLO RUNS OR WHERE'S 'COLLECTIVE CABINET RESPONSIBILITY'?

Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar and Richard Bruton and their Labour Party partners Joan Burton and Ruairí Quinn

SO, with not even 100 days of the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition in power, one thing is clear: the new government has no communications strategy.

Fine Gael ministers are falling over themselves to offer contradictory comment on the intricacies of government policy while their Labour counterparts are suspiciously silent. But Enda Kenny has the report cards ready.

In fact, it would seem to be every Fine Gael minister for himself with Leo Varadkar joining Richard Bruton on the ‘whip up some controversy’ merry-go-around and Finance Minister Michael Noonan, and Taoiseach Enda Kenny entered the fray on Sunday with a staunch back-tracking on Varadkar’s weekend claims carried by The Sunday Times that the Irish Government would need a second bail-out in 2012 or 2013.

“I think that would generally be most people’s view,” said the Fine Gael Transport Minister. Unfortunately, that ‘generally’ does not include Enda Kenny or Finance Minister Michael Noonan!

Noonan told a meeting of accountants in Limerick:

There is no question about a bail-out package having to be brought in next year.

It was not enough for Noonan alone to say this so enter Enda Kenny who also asserted:

Let me say with absolute clarity there would be no need for a second bail-out.

Funnily, Kenny doesn’t get it that clarity is one thing we haven’t got from him.

The Coalition has no united front on economic policy. Varadkar’s claims came just days after Richard Bruton floated his ‘slash low paid wages even more’ policy which prompted a response from Kenny that Bruton was pursuing a “personal agenda” – and there we were deluded into thinking that this was a government with collective responsibility.

It is hard to decipher just what is going on in government and in recent days the news media has been awash with policies and promises.

A “senior source” in Government told The Sunday Business Post that the Government will include restrictive practices by lawyers and doctors in its planned labour market reforms.

The same article quotes Justice Minister Alan Shatter as claiming that he will publish a Bill in September on legal services and that “the bottom line is that Government is committed to reform across a broad range of sectors”. But, Alan, can we really believe you when you talk about Government in a “we” sense?

While Richard Bruton’s wage cuts for Sunday workers dominated news reports, social media and the opinion columns for nearly three days, he was trumped by Varadkar. Maybe the reason for all this grandstanding came in Kenny’s faltering interview with Ryan Tubridy on last week’s Late Late Show. Kenny told Tubridy that “he was keeping a “report card” on every minister’s performance” and:

I am starting the report cards already.

So it’s a gold rush for the news media with the Fine Gael ministers all looking to be top of the class and willing to comment on anything and everything as Kenny seems happy to sweep up the debris afterward. It would be nice to think it was all part of some master plan but it clearly isn’t. So get ready for more disarray, discord and mixed messages.

It must be time for Brian Hayes to come off the bench and score another own goal for the Coalition.