Fine Gael has been viewed as the party of rectitude – but it's far too easy to preach morality in opposition, writes PATSY McGARRY
IT WAS in the 1960s that the late Fianna Fáil TD George Colley first spoke of “low standards in high places”. He was then struggling with the ambitions of party colleague Charles J Haughey.
Colley was expressing not just his own concerns but those of the ageing founding fathers of his party. They feared the new breed of carpetbagger in the party whose primary characteristic was vaulting ambition; those who had attached themselves to Fianna Fáil not for what it stood for but because of its success.
Colley and his like were no match for these upstarts and soon a cute hoor culture had free rein in the party and in the State. We live with the consequences. As does Fianna Fáil.
But low standards in high places were not a peculiarity of the 1960s or later decades in Irish politics. Nor were they peculiar to Fianna Fáil. As we learned over recent days, they are alive and well and living at Leinster House.
With some justification Fine Gael has been seen as the party of rectitude, moral and fiscal, in Irish politics. It helped of course that it has spent so many years in opposition, where it is so much easier to preserve one’s virtue.
For, as the 19th century English historian Lord Acton wrote: “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
He was Catholic. Catholics know about such things, not least in recent times. Lord Acton also said: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it”.
That would include the current holder of the office of Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. It would be agreed generally that he is an honourable man, with more than 35 years of unsullied public service behind him. But even he, it now seems, succumbed to temptation dangled before him by the lure of power.
Had those in the Fianna Fáil party of the 1960s and thereafter acted more forcefully when they recognised the tendencies of some newcomers, we would not now be pleading for kindness from strangers as we scamper among ruins.
What happened in Roscommon at the general election in February was not democracy. It was deception.
Had Fine Gael been honest with the Roscommon people it would not have held Denis Naughten’s seat. It would have gone to John McDermott of the Hospital Action Committee, as it did to the late Tom Foxe in 1989 and 1992.
Instead Fine Gael won two seats and for the first time in its history Fianna Fáil has no TD in Roscommon.
And, it is simply not credible that Fine Gael did not understand the lie of the land where the hospital was concerned. It was the talk of the county.
That was the context in which the Taoiseach told the people of Roscommon: “We are committed to maintaining services in Roscommon County Hospital”.
He went further: “You know, down in the accident and emergency, what it takes and what needs to be done in your own local hospital. And we will protect and defend that . . . I want you and everybody else to get out there now and defend what we have in Roscommon-South Leitrim and see that Naughten and Feighan are sent back to Dáil Éireann with an even stronger mandate than they had the last time.”
And they were. Naughten, who scraped home without reaching the quota in 2007, won the highest percentage vote of 19.62 per cent with his party colleague Frank Feighan not far behind on 18.91 per cent. Luke “Ming” Flanagan, the first declared elected, got 18.79 per cent of the vote.
Without doubt the people of Roscommon “bought” the Fine Gael message. Who could blame them?
Besides the Taoiseach, there was the current Minister for Health James Reilly. He wrote a letter, beginning “Dear people of Roscommon . . .”
There was, he said, “a very strong argument that Roscommon and other local hospitals have the ability to deal with complex medical conditions and less complex surgery. Safety is not simply about surgical competencies, but is also about timely access. Time to treatment, particularly in remote geographical locations, is absolutely crucial.”
Dr Reilly knew who he was addressing. Roscommon is the most rural county in Ireland with all that implies where roads and general infrastructure is concerned. It also has among the highest number of over 65s per capita in the State.
Dr Reilly reassured them in his letter: “Fine Gael undertakes, in accordance with the Fine Gael Policy on Local Hospitals, to retain the Emergency, Surgical, Medical and other health services at Roscommon Hospital”.
But Fine Gael was not alone in this deception.
In his pre-election literature Labour Party candidate (now Senator) John Kelly said: “On the issue of Roscommon County Hospital I have received a personal commitment from Eamon Gilmore that there will be no downgrading of services under Labour.”
The people of Roscommon were sold a pig in a poke.
For those who thought the election of this Government was a new beginning, recent days have seen a return to despair.
Fintan O’Toole is on leave