SKETCH:WITH MUFFLERS on their trumpets, they blew a soft tune in a carefully stage-managed performance on the steps of Government Buildings.
No discordant notes from Eamon and Enda yesterday.
The Good News Brothers kept everything low key as they played a medley of metaphors that had people wondering if they were delivering a progress report on the Coalition or a study on the effects of coastal erosion on allotments.
Here’s that Government progress report in a nutshell: There’s a wind out there which would cut you in two and it’s not safe yet to go out into the garden and blow your trumpet or turn a corner to check the roses, because you might fall over the cliff at the far end and if it wasn’t for the platform built by Enda and Eamon we would have already fallen over that cliff and then where would we be? Well.
We wouldn’t be at the beginning of the very long road which lies ahead, imbued with a fresh stability and confidence and able to navigate a new course towards “the Best Little Country in the World to Do Business”.
As Enda said yesterday: “This is not a case of coming out here blowing trumpets to say we’ve turned corners and that everything is rosy in the garden.” In fairness, they were only little trumpets, with mufflers on, but playing a self-congratulatory tune nonetheless.
Oh, but things were very bad last year. “Horrendous,” shivered Eamon. He said we were nearly gone with the wind when the Coalition took office 12 months ago.
“The country was on the edge of a cliff,” quivered the Tánaiste: international reputation in tatters, with broken banks and broken public finances and the “spirit of the people all but broken”. Look at us now.
Today “it is still windy, but we are no longer on the edge of the cliff. We have pulled the country back . . . and now we have a platform on which to build.”
The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste were at pains to point out they weren’t making a big song and dance about their achievements. It wouldn’t have looked right. That’s the sort of thing the last government did.
And while their Coalition is carrying on the tradition, they are doing it with all humility (along with the usual photo opportunity and laudatory brochure). No. It wouldn’t have looked right at all yesterday – but it’s grand today, apparently.
Fine Gael’s parliamentary party is gathering this lunchtime in Merrion Square Park to mark a year in power. Notification of the photocall arrived yesterday afternoon: “Fine Gael deputies and senators will hold coloured stars detailing significant Fine Gael achievements in Government.”
We are not making this up. The symbolism is overwhelming. The event poses many questions.
Will they silently hold up the stars? Will the stars have five points on them – a touching homage to their election manifesto? Will they be able to keep straight faces? Who’ll bring the trumpets? Most importantly, what will they all say when somebody asks the inevitable question: “What is the stars?”
There is bound to be a big turnout to witness what should be a very moving tableau. If nothing else, to see if members of the Labour Party kick Eamon Gilmore’s platform from beneath their smug Coalition partners and send them hurtling over that cliff.
After all, only yesterday the Taoiseach and Tánaiste were boasting about how united their two parties are and how they do everything together.
They played their little muffled trumpet voluntarily yesterday to frozen journalists in the courtyard of Government Buildings. The fountain in the centre was turned off in honour of the austerity.
It was bitterly cold, but for Enda and Eamon, it is always sunny. At least until their political masters get the boot.
Enda and Eamon’s “annual report” was 44 pages long – 43 pages of achievements and one page listing a few “commitments Under Review.” They talked of stability and confidence and positivity. They dismissed charges that their report wasn’t much different to those introduced by the last government and looked pained by comments that their announcement amounted to little more than a PR exercise.
Unlike previous occasions, Enda said, they had taken “a hands-on approach to delivery”. Back in the bad old days, “ministers operated in individual silos”. Not any more.
Now, they have to account for themselves as part of a team and he is running the rule over their stewardship of their departments.
Is the relationship between the two parties colder or warmer now, a year into their coalition? Eamon had no doubts. “I think it’s warmer,” he said, as the journalists wiped the dewdrops from their noses and muttered about it being fecking freezing from where they were standing.
“This time last year we had just come out of a general election where we were knocking lumps off each other, competing, as political parties do in an election” said the Tánaiste. Now, they are working together very well.
Enda nodded like one of those little dogs in the back of a car while Eamon continued emoting. The Taoiseach’s head nearly fell off, he was nodding so much.
“Perceived personality clashes” were irrelevant, he said. Both he and Eamon had a very solid working relationship and they had found “a new understanding from working closer to people as to how we can actually move the programme forward and this is a sober reflection of it today”. It was lovely, really.
They bring a better vibe than the poisonous dynamic that went before them. Despite the strained metaphors of cliffs and rose gardens, they talked like men with a plan and a real sense of purpose, even if they still left us wondering what, exactly, is the stars. And quietly blew their trumpets to ward off any suggestion of black holes.
Maybe we’ll find them in Merrion Square Park today.
