Brian Cowen sounded as rough as a bear’s arse on Morning Ireland following his all night revelling in The Ardilaun during this week’s Fianna Fáil think-in in Galway.
The reponse from some was typical - ‘An sure, isn’t he entitled to have a drink?’ ‘What’s the world coming to if a man can’t let his hair down once in a while?’ Yeah sure, we’re Irish, we’re drunk, isn’t that the sign of a real man?
To people with such delusions I say, excuse me, but the last time I looked, Brian Cowen’s job is not to be like someone from 24 Hour Party People, raving in the Haçienda until the small hours, roaring his head off, and knocking back drinks! He’s the Taoiseach, the leader of our State, and the man whose job it is to lead us out of the financial crisis.
Brian Cowen is entitled to a drink on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, but for the rest of the week he owes it to the voters and taxpayers to take his job seriously, to take the financial crisis seriously, and make sure he is in a fit state to do so.
He is NOT entitled to turn arrive for an interview on a major current affairs programme late and feeling the after effects of a night’s carousing. That is not the sign of someone who has a sense of responsibility about his job.
To the ‘Isn’t he entitled to have a drink?’ brigade, spare me the praise for the boozing. None of us would get praise from our employer for turning up at the office worse for wear having been out until 3am drinking.
For Insider, Cowen’s partying is just the tip of an iceberg, the final straw that makes me conclude once and for all that this man is not fit to lead the country.
He was minister for finance during the unsustainable property bubble but let it inflate and inflate and put forward no vision to ensure our eggs were not all in one basket.
When the crash loomed and people like David McWilliams were calling for measures to be taken, Cowen chose to ignore this. He had little to say about Bertie Ahern’s disgusting “I don’t know how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide” remark concerning people who warned of the oncoming economic downturn.
When the crash came he allowed himself to be strongarmed by the banks into giving the blanket guarantee. ‘They didn’t know the extent of the damage’ plead some. That’s not good enough. He was minister for finance and then taoiseach, it was his job to find out. If you are an accountant and you cook the books or ignore the finances you will lose your job, so Cowen deserves no excuse. Then again he had no problem with the zero regulation of the Celtic Tiger years, so what should we have expected?
In the early part of the crash he called on the Irish people to “internalise” the crisis. This was crass remark, especially coming from a man who will receive a taoiseach’s pension, a ministerial pension, and TD’s pension when he retires.
In the Dáil his performances are not statesmanlike or even competent. In debate he rarely rises above the indignant sneer, the cranky response, or narkiness - it’s as if it’s a burden to him.
‘He is working hard, he just has a communication problem,’ say his defenders. Insider doesn’t buy that either. When minister for health he described his department as Angola and sat it out until he as moved to a different post. This is another of his problems - if he is in a job he does not like, he switches off badly. He did so in health, he’s done it again in the office of An Taoiseach.
Would Insider go as far as to say Cowen simply does not care about the effect the downturn is having on ordinary people? Well, let me be restrained and say he is, at the very least, detached from the reality of the downturn and the impact it is having.
In many ways he’s being cagey and tactical. If he acknowledges the severity of matters and the causes of the mess, he’s leaving himself open to criticism that he is among those to blame. Every action he takes is coloured and subtly influenced by the need to avoid falling into this trap.
And this is another problem with Cowen, he is Fianna Fáil first, Ireland second. This is why he will not hold the three by-elections. He knows FF will lose them and that his majority will be reduced and could precipitate an early general election.
At a time of economic crisis we expect the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance to be battling hard to rebuild the economy, but Cowen is near nowhere to be seen. This week’s controversy was the most we have seen of him in ages.
It seems as if Cowen has retreated into the background, unable, or uninterested, in tackling the problem, instead leaving it all to the hardworking Brian Lenihan, a man with a serious illness, to do the work both should be engaged in.
Given all this, Insider sees no reason why Cowen has the right to remain taoiseach. He has no popular mandate, has shown no competence for his brief, and has been more active in defending himself from charges of drunkenness, than in explaining fully and honestly to people why Anglo Irish Bank cannot be wound down quickly.
Cowen is not the sole cause of our economic mess, but he is certainly one of faces in that hideous rogues’ gallery of culprits. For that he does not deserve to return after the next election as Taoiseach.
Polling day comes in either 2011 or 2012. Who will you vote for? Galway has many fine Fianna Fáil representatives - Éamon Ó Cuív, Frank Fahey, Michael Kitt, etc, - but when you see them on a ballot paper, instead of their faces, see Brian Cowen’s and ask yourself: “Galway might need them, but does Ireland need five more years of Brian Cowen?”
Just remember as your pen reaches the paper to mark your preference, that when you cast a vote for a Fianna Fáil candidate, you are voting for Brian Cowen to remain as taoiseach. Could you really do that?
