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de Burca goes nuclear
Read more about: Europe, Green Party 
4 days is a long time in politics. Remember when the George Lee resignation seemed to dominate? Deirdre de Burca in today’s Irish Times –
In fact, matters have become more serious of late where Brian Cowen appears to have failed to honour two specific agreements that were made at the highest level (ie between the party leaders), which I do not feel at liberty to disclose here.
When I challenged my leader John Gormley about one of these agreements last week, he informed me that I had been “shafted” by Fianna Fáil.
This was the point at which I knew that it was time for me to resign from the parliamentary party and from the Government.
Is this the long-rumoured job with Maire Geoghegan-Quinn’s staff in Brussels? Note incidentally that if true, one reason to keep the EU Commissioner job in-house was that the staff jobs provided additional plums to be handed out. Except that MGQ apparently didn’t play ball. Consistent with past government practice, will the Sindo get the government side of the story?
Curiously, she doesn’t specify which leaders she is referring to. Was it Bertie and John, or Brian and John? Everyone knows that in his day Bertie would promise you the earth, moon and stars – or give you that impression – to get what he wanted, but in the fullness of time the real deal often turned out to be a horse of a different colour!
If one of those deals concerned her own personal career prospects and securing a plum job in Brussels with MGQ, then God bless her, but she’s hopelessly naive as well as having a completely overblown sense of entitlement. And if the Greens participation in government has now come down to arranging job placements for court favourites with FF, then maybe it’s time they let the electorate give a view as to what it is they are ‘entitled ‘ to at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, herself and Lee might consider a new career doings ads for L’Oreal. Because they’re worth it!
Without question some of what de Búrca says is true: FF has frustrated the Greens in many areas, especially in government reform and planning. But this is not surprising and isn’t really the point.
One major failing of Gormley and the Greens has been their inability to manage expectations. True they became critical to government numerically but they still had only 6 TDs. There would always be a limit to how much they could acheive. The idea that they could wring whatever they wanted from FF merely because they were indispensable is idiotic. For a start, by the time the Greens had become indispensable, the magnitude of the economic collapse had become clear, and the reaction against the incumbents had already spread to the Greens. This meant that while the Greens were key to FF remaining in power, walking way meant complete obliteration. This severely weakened the Greens’ leverage: FF knew the Greens couldn’t possibly face the electorate.
In those circumstances it became essential for the Greens to exert as much as influence as they could and to buy time to attempt to rebuild their identity. This was always going to be difficult, but de Búrca really blew a hole in it. Whatever insiders know about her position in the party and however well atuned members are to the realities of power (and they have proven themselves remarkably pragmatic), the general public, or more specifically the floating voter who was a potential green first or second preference, now sees an insider resign because the Greens are indistinguishable from FF.
For a party already in meltdown, this is a cruel blow and is far more damaging than the Lee affair is to FG. One way or the other FG will gain significantly in the next election and stands a good chance of taking power. The Greens, already teetering on the brink of extinction, are desparately trying to carve out a survival strategy. This was always going to be monumental task but De Búrca may now have scuppered it completely.
Veronica’s point about a sense of entitlement and jobs placements is spot on. It is telling that both Lee and De Búrca were self-absorbed to the extent that they were prepared to inflict significant damage on those who had paved their way into the oireachtas. Lee was a complete joke, not being able to articulate what he really wanted of Fine Gael or of politics generally. It sounded at times like he read his 27,000 votes as an expectation that some kind of crown should be placed on him and that he might be worshipped in his new party! In de Búrca’s case, she basically admits that what really upset her was not the failure of the Greens to secure policy change, but the failure of John Gormley to insist on her getting a job in Brussels. Astonishing. If she had exited on a couple of solid points of principle: FF committed to A and B which were core Green issues and then reneged. But her remarks about the why are coy except to say that the straw that broke the camel’s back was a job in Brussels!
” It is telling that both Lee and De Búrca were self-absorbed to the extent that they were prepared to inflict significant damage on those who had paved their way into the oireachtas.”
Kenny & FG set themselves up for the Lee debacle. And judging by the polls the public view Kenny as the biggest loser and FG should be glad they got off lightly. Also I disagree with the idea that FG paved the way for Lee.
Do you not believe Lee would have won as many votes as an independent?
DeBurca did no damage to the greens. Down to margin og error in the last poll, trounced at the locals, and tied up in embarassing gaffes with Gogarty, Incinerators, waste policy etc. Hard to see DeBurca’s resignation as significant damage.
Just to clear something up- 27000 votes to a Fine Gael candidate in a byelection in South Dublin in the current zeitgeist, is surely no earth shattering acheivement. Put him against the other four heavy hitters in there as well as a couple of challengers and Lee would do well to get 10000 no 1s.He knew his big vote would have partially evapd by next year. I think there is an entitlement mentality also and a lot more to both departures than is said.
I was assured by a Green candidate who got a few hundred votes at the locals that their party faithful would vote their TDs out of Govt because of policy compromises to FF. That was in June at the count in Punchestown. They gritted their teeth and held firm but probably their own members and their voters arent comfortable with realpolitik compromise.
If they did a HMG walkout they wouldnt be thanked for it either so they cant win.
tuppence “Do you not believe Lee would have won as many votes as an independent?” No I don’t, and I doubt anyone with a brain in their heads does either and if you do then you’re completely ignorant about Irish politics. I think George Lee could still have won a seat in the Dublin South by-election standing as an independent, and might well have topped the poll but he wouldn’t not have won remotely the same number of votes. I’m sure you will retort that it’s all the same but it is not and if you think it is then God help us all.
Can we have a temporary ban on the phrase ‘sense of entitlement’ and its derivatives? George Lee, so-called saviour of the Irish economy and polity quits the alternative government lead party talking about dysfunctional nature of Irish politics, the institutionalization of TDs, the dead hand of the party system with its moronic king-pins like Simon Coveney (head of policy — I suppose that explains their lack of it); De Búrca leaves stating what is obviously to be inferred from the glazed look and Stepford Pols mien of the Greens; and the best the peanuts can come up with is ‘sense of entitlement’, a phrase generally used by US Republicans to describe the urban poor?
Mote, beam, people.