We need to let the light shine on Enda

COMMENT

No matter what muck the Opposition may rake up out of the Moriarty Report, I will be surprised if any of it sticks for long to Fine Gael and the Opposition. I imagine that Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin will be somewhat restrained when it comes to criticising others about financial skullduggery. Fianna Fáil was glad to be able to call on Michael Lowry when they needed him over the last number of years.
Anyway, things could hardly go better for Enda Kenny. Let us hope, for the sake of our country, that the sun continues to shine on him.
Perhaps he will turn out to be a lucky Taoiseach. Because luck can be more important than ability and without a bit of luck on your side, you cannot achieve much.
So far so good but the real tests are still ahead and he will need more than luck if he is to get something out of his negotiations with Europe in the days ahead.
All the rest of us can do is wish him and his team the best of everything. We must hope that whatever outcome is achieved will be to Ireland’s and Europe’s advantage. The situation is far too serious for Kenny’s political opponents here to hope he slips up.
As the late Seamus Brennan might put it, he is now playing Premiership football with the big boys in Europe. He is no longer representing Fine Gael but is fighting for all of us, whether we voted for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Féin or did not vote at all in the recent election. We are all behind him in his bid to get the best deal for Ireland in Europe.
I am sure that along with Enda we are all delighted with the announcement from Barack Obama that he intends to visit Ireland in May.
That visit should give us a bit of a boost at a time when we badly need it. It will certainly attract a lot of attention to this country from the American press and television and may do some wonders for our ailing tourism industry.
The visit may also attract further American investment in Ireland’s economy – presuming that Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan succeed in maintaining our low corporation tax regime.
I think I have seen all the American presidents who visited Ireland over the years, either in the Dáil or outside it. They include John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I can even remember Dwight D Eisenhower’s visit to Ireland in the early 1960s.
But he was an ex-president then. My reason for remembering that visit is because I was nearly knocked off my bike by his entourage on the Malahide Road in Dublin. I cannot remember what he was doing on the Malahide Road at the time. Probably to play a round of golf at Portmarnock; possibly to visit Malahide Castle. Hardly to call on Charlie Haughey at Kinsealy. Charlie was only a young political pup on the way up then.
However, Barack Obama is certain to get a huge welcome wherever he goes and if Enda Kenny can bask in the light of Obama’s presence, then more power to him and feck the begrudgers. He is facing a tough five years in office and will be entitled to some little light-hearted intervals now and again.
There will not be the same universal welcome for the Queen of England when she comes to call on us in two months’ time. However, I think that by now the majority of the Irish people north and south of the border will be happy enough with the Queen’s visit.
For my own part, while I will not go out of my way to meet her, I am glad that we are mature enough to be able to say, “Welcome to Ireland, Mam.”
She has, of course, visited the North on a number of occasions but she looks on our six counties north of the border as part of her kingdom. You cannot really blame her for that. All her ancestors, going back for hundreds of years, looked down on all of us in this part of Ireland as their subjects too.
When I was younger, I protested against the visit of her sister, Margaret, to this country. But, as I said, I was younger then and lacking in sense. I should have ignored her visit if I didn’t want to welcome it.
Things have changed and even Sinn Féin has said that the war with England is over. While Gerry Adams did not say he would welcome the Queen of England here, his objections to the visit were not as strident as they might have been some years ago. The worst he could say about the royal visit was that it was “premature”.
I disagree with him. The word I would use is “appropriate”. It is appropriate that we would welcome the head-of-state of our nearest neighbour. She will not be visiting us as her ancestors did, receiving homage from her loyal subjects. She is coming on the invitation of our president and will be greeted as an equal by President McAleese.
If people want to line O’Connell Street in Dublin to greet her then that’s okay by me. It is a free country. I will not be there myself but if people want to do that they are entitled to do it. If they want to wave little Union Jacks at her I might cringe a little but I’ll get over it. If I am giving the impression that I am not too happy about this royal visit I am sorry. That is not my intention.
This visit, like the visit of Barack Obama, is to be welcomed and only good can come from it. It is also overdue. It shows that we have come of age and that like other equal members of the European Union, we can put past differences aside.
If Enda Kenny can shine by the Queen’s side on her visit here, good luck to him. I do not expect him to make a fool of himself as his Fine Gael predecessor John Bruton did in the presence of Prince Charles at Dublin Castle.