Does Enda Kenny have what it takes to handle Brexit?

Enda Kenny should step down. Ireland needs a vibrant Taoiseach to bring urgency to our Brexit response.

That Kenny’s years of experience counted for little in a botched general election campaign, or during the water and bin charges fiasco, augurs ill for the far more complex EU negotiations ahead.

His hail-fellow-well-met manner won't butter any parsnips in Berlin now.

As Brexit bites, Ireland faces harsh reality. We have a Taoiseach due to retire, and a weak Dáil. It’s not what the country requires.

Kenny can quit while he is more or less ahead. It is time for fresh blood, and quickly.

Ireland should be worried. Our minority Government is implausible. There are too many variables.

Some observers think that being the only English-speaking state in the EU (besides Malta) will make us invaluable in Brussels. But being the only English-speaking state also means that we are on our own (besides Malta).

In losing Britain we have lost an ally. We are literally marginalised. Already the use of English as a major EU language is under attack.

This is an opportunity for Fine Gael to get on with the inevitable, to pick a new leader who can energise both party and country.

The likely person is Simon Coveney or Leo Varadkar. No potential candidate is visionary, and probably none grasps the true extent of the crisis caused by globalisation in the social and economic lives of many voters. But a taoiseach with future prospects is needed to tackle three big challenges in particular.

Dirtied our bib

The first is protecting Irish interests in

Europe

.

We dirtied our bib in Brussels when the Celtic Tiger crashed. Fianna Fáil ministers had neglected EU meetings and contaminated European banking. That stain will not fade.

More recently, despite Fine Gael's much-vaunted EU alliance with the party of Angela Merkel, we stepped back from sharing her load when she embraced refugees. We agreed to take only a few hundred, and have not even done that. We are no longer especially "good Europeans".

The second urgent challenge is domestic stability.

We cannot now just stagger on. Circumstances have changed radically. We need a new election sooner rather than later. Fine Gael must swallow humble pie and, before calling that election, do a deal with Labour to reassure voters on incomes, housing and working conditions.

Spain’s second recent general election raises the spectre of a result more or less the same as last time. But Irish people can see what Brexit means. And if by chance Fianna Fáil edges ahead, then Fine Gael or Labour or Sinn Féin must join that party in office for five years.

We cannot afford the glorified local authority that is currently Dáil Éireann.

New blood

The third challenge requiring new blood is all-Ireland co-operation.

After Brexit have come facile calls from Sinn Féin for a Border poll and face-saving rhetoric from First Minister Arlene Foster of the DUP.

In Britain David Cameron led the charge to remain but honourably resigned when his electorate rejected his plea.

In the North Foster led the charge to leave. How can she stay First Minister when an even bigger proportion of her electorate rejected her call?

A new taoiseach with new ideas must reassure the North that the Republic does not see Brexit as a chance to put one over on the “British” Irish, but rather as a chance for all sides to build pragmatically on the Belfast Agreement.

Daring leadership is needed, and perhaps even hints of a federal Ireland and Commonwealth membership. We can achieve a unity of common interest.

The EU has been something of a bastion against unfettered globalisation. The latter threat is facilitated by national elites more than by Brussels bureaucrats. But voters can scarcely be blamed for blaming Brussels when so many national politicians use the EU as a whipping boy for their ills, and when the European Commission chooses the likes of Jean-Claude Junker as its president.

Kenny showed arrogance too when he packed off to Brussels his close supporter and former minister Phil Hogan as an EU commissioner. Hogan boasted that he got the job because he had delivered on water charges and tough septic tank rules. The former is a failure and the latter is widely unenforced.

If the EU is to survive and thrive Europe’s leaders must persuade voters that it acts in their best interests and is not a cynical club of privileged elites. For that able and energetic politicians are needed. Not least in Ireland. Dr Colum Kenny is emeritus professor of communications at Dublin City University