Kenny must ensure those stirrings among backbenchers arenÕt first sign of a mutiny

Date Published: 17-Oct-2012

Are we witnessing this Government’s first serious mutiny, its first brush with what became almost a weekly event during the last chaotic months of the dismal Fianna Fáil and Green coalition?

The letter published in the Irish Examiner on Monday was written by eight Fine Gael TDs. It laid down a direct challenge to both Fine Gael’s coalition partners Labour and also to the party leader Enda Kenny, who has acquiesced to Labour over the Croke Park agreement to ensure other Fine Gael ‘wants’ can be pushed through.

The letter itself majored on comments by PJ Fitzpatrick the previous Thursday. Fitzpatrick is the independent chair of the body that implements the Croke Park agreement. He told the Public Accounts Committee last Thursday that neither allowances nor automatic increments for public servants were explicitly included in Croke Park.

That came as a surprise to many people as Government Ministers had spent the previous year giving the strong impression that they were expressly included.

Fitzpatrick’s disclosure gave the impetus to this group of young Fine Gael TDs to put their heads above the parapet and make public their long-held private misgivings about Croke Park. In so doing, they set themselves up as defenders of Fine Gael principles. Of course, the corollary was that Kenny wasn’t adequately defending the party’s core values.

The combination of the eight is interesting. They are all male, and most are in their 20s and 30s. All were elected for the first time in February 2011 and are – with the exception of Brendan Griffin in Kerry South – the second-, or third-, ranking TD in the constituency.

This isn’t the first time this group have come together. Earlier this year, the eight TDs were part of a group of ten who organised parallel meetings to Fine Gael’s parliamentary party apparatus.

The ten included three Galway TDs: Sean Kyne and Brian Walsh from Galway West and Paul Connaughton from Galway East. Walsh has since left the group but Kyne and Connaughton remain key members.

These new TDs came into a parliamentary party with many new Deputies like themselves. But there were also the long-term TDs already there. And those who had not received preferment to the ministerial ranks were still carrying the scars of the leadership challenge in June 2010. Very quicly new TDS found themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war between the pro-, and anti-, Enda camps.

This particular group of TDs, who socialise together in Dublin, did not see themselves being aligned to any camp and began to try to distinguish themselves as a ‘third way’ in the party. The reason for this was obvious. The party had 76 TDs. They were so far down the pecking order they did not have a hope in hell of getting promotion. If they did not show initiative, they would end up being "lobby fodder", to use Barry Andrews’ neat phrase that described the fate of the backbencher.

The group of ten organised meetings, coordinated their approach and strategy to certain issues that came up in the parliamentary party meetings, and generally began to assume the shape of a classical political awkward squad – those within a party who resist the status quo.

The group scored a few successes – highly effective critiques within the party of Croke Park’s frailties and on Phil Hogan’s poor handling of the household charge.

But before they could gather momentum, Enda Kenny’s people got wind of what they were doing. Kenny carpeted the group telling them there was no room for "five-a-sides" in Fine Gael.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.