The only thing furious was the pace of the Fine Gael leader, writes PAUL CULLENin Kilkenny
THE MAN who would rather meet the people than appear in a television debate is striding through the streets of Kilkenny.
The pace is furious and the going is good. The air thickens with bonhomie and wisecracks. There’s no rancour and a lot of genuine goodwill. Enda Kenny, smaller than you realised and dressed in a short navy raincoat and navy slacks, is in his element. Comfortable in himself, he makes instant eye-contact and cosies up to this electoral targets.
The targets generally reciprocate, in spite of the welter of mikes and television cameras encircling the Fine Gael leader. They wish him well, promise to think of his party on the 25th.
Some take the time to unburden themselves of their worries: most often, jobs, followed by emigration – many have children abroad. In this town there is little evidence to support his claim that he had never seen the Irish people as angry with politics as they are now.
They seem mollified by the answers they get, which mostly boils down to Enda’s five-point plan. The plan, Enda tells anyone who will listen, will restore trust and integrity to politics and get the country working again. His cabinet will roll up its collective sleeves and lead by example.
It is, he told us earlier in a nearby hotel, “a really powerful plan” but few bother to ask what it actually proposes.
Only one woman breaks the good karma. She wants to know why Kenny won’t be debating with Micheál Martin and Eamon Gilmore this evening. The Fine Gael leader tries to turn her. Sure, isn’t he doing three debates and isn’t his schedule awful busy? The woman holds her ground, though, and it’s soon time to move on.
At the Delta training centre for people with learning disabilities, he breaks for soup and salmon and tours a sensory garden described as “an oasis of tranquillity”. The staff plead on the back of the menu for him to remember to appoint a minister for disability who would make “no decision about us without us”.
Another town, another canvass, no slip-ups and the breeze is still behind Kenny. Then it’s off in the black Mercedes to Carlow and later south Dublin and more flesh-pressing; if he keeps this up, the Fine Gael leader will have connected with as many people as he might have reached on Vincent Browne’s debate tonight.