Speaking at Fine Gael’s Special delegate Conference at City West Hotel in Dublin today (Saturday) Party Leader Enda Kenny said “On this day 439 years ago, a baby boy was born in Pisa. One of many. But, the son of Giulia Ammannati, born in 1564, in the reign of Cosimo, was a boy with a difference. He would endure Heresy, even the Inquisition, to change our understanding not just of the World, but of the Universe itself. That boy was Galileo Galilei.
“So, 439 years on, I think we picked a pretty good day to talk about Change. About New Understanding. New Politics. New Hope. About Campaigning to Win in this great country of ours. We picked a good day to talk about the fierce urgency of Now.
“You have come here to today, from North, South, East and West. So many of you. At so much expense and inconvenience: children to be minded, older relatives to be cared for, daughters and sons with special needs to be looked after, businesses to be run, a much-needed day off to be given up.
“But, you did it. You did it because you believe. You did it because you care. Not just for Fine Gael. But, for our Society, our Country, our People, our Future. For that, I thank you. And tonight, I am Proud to be with you.
The Fight
“Last Summer, I promised to take Fine Gael back into power. With your support, I will. Together, we’ll show this country, that for Fine Gael, promises are made not to be broken, but to be kept. Together, we’ll show the people of this country, that for Fine Gael, a PLEDGE is always something of Honour. Not - dare I say it - a brand of cheap, political, PR polish.
“I want to say this: we’ll give the people of Ireland an ear, a voice, a future. Because, this fight we’re engaged in, is no longer just about Fine Gael. It is no longer just about the Hearts and Minds of the Irish electorate. No. This is no longer a battle for the party. This is a battle for the Very Soul of Politics in this country.
The Political Crisis
“You see, last May, the people, didn’t Punish us. They didn’t attack us. Instead, they did their worst. They stopped caring. They became Indifferent. But, Indifference is not just an issue for Fine Gael alone. Indifference is the crisis affecting modern politics. So much so, that three years ago, President Bill Clinton got a group of people together in the White House to talk about it. One of them was a survivor of the Holocaust.
“He mesmerised the audience by what he had to say. He spoke of his people lying in their rags of blankets, staring blankly into the space of Buchenwald. Strangers to their surroundings. No longer feeling hunger, pain or thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and didn’t know it.
“But, he said, there were others, who, rooted in their faith, felt that to be abandoned by humanity in this way - though it was horrifying - was still not the ultimate. They felt that to be abandoned by God – to be on the receiving end of His Indifference - was worse, far worse, than being punished by him.
“As he told Bill Clinton “better an Unjust God than an Indifferent one.” He pressed on about Indifference. He asked this top-flight Washington audience - Why? Why, when they knew what was happening to the Jews did the good people do nothing? Why – he asked in that terrible silence - ‘could they not have bombed the railways leading to the Death Camps? Just the railways? Just the once?’
“Indifference in Ireland is another kind of murder. It is our young men kicked to death… on a whim… for a mobile phone. It is a Dublin man having his throat slashed for a Silver Ford Focus…. 1999.
“It is our Gardai who go out on a Sunday night, never to return from a call out to the Stillorgan Road. “Indifference is gang warfare in our neighbourhoods. It is the execution-style killings that Brian Jennings tells us all about on the Seven O’Clock News, every other Monday morning.
“Indifference is communities terrorised through the night by rampaging thugs. Thugs who are meant to be in Fifth Class. Indifference is our children being born and dying at the side of the road.
Indifference is a mother ‘Rescuing’ her intellectually-disabled daughter from a psychiatric institution. The same indifference that turned her ‘temporary’ stay into an eight-year Sentence.
Indifference is our old people, the people who built this country, though hard graft and sweat, being abandoned and neglected and confined in pain to never-ending waiting lists. So, I say tonight let us fight that Indifference. Because, as our man from the Holocaust told Bill Clinton, Indifference is never a beginning. It is always an end.
The Beginning
“But for us, in our End is our Beginning. And that Beginning is about getting people to care. To believe in democracy. To make them proud of this nation. To make this nation theirs. And to do that, we have to get them angry. We must expose and oppose the treachery of Fianna Fail and the PDs. And, in time, we will replace them with responsible, honest government. Between them, FF and the PDs have created a new people in this country. A New Dispossessed. And no, they are not only the poor, condemned to the sprawling housing estates of our cities and suburbs. No. These New Dispossessed are people we would often have thought of as ‘Natural Fine Gael voters’. Those Dispossessed of Community. Dispossessed of Confidence. Dispossessed of Hope. And, among them, you’ll find our finest men and women. Of every age, every class, every colour and every creed. And to them, we The Politicians, appeared to offer them….. nothing. We meant….. nothing. When we spoke, they believed….nothing. That’s why tonight, I’m proposing a New Politics, for a New People, for a New Time. The kind of politics that we will practise, that we will stand for and stand firm over, in Fine Gael. We must - so that we can make sure that when these people want to express their disbelief in, and their disdain for, what passes for Politics and what passes for Policy in Ireland today, that they Come to Us. That when they are disgusted by the Lies and the Expediency of Government, that they turn, not to others. But to Us. And it’s up to us – every one of us here tonight – to seek those people out and to let them understand We are here. We are with you. And we will stand by you. We want to Engage people in the Politics of Truth. The Politics of Confidence. Because this, is all about Engagement. And here are its Rules.
Reclaiming Our Credentials
“From tonight, every Fine Gaeler must get out there and make their presence felt in their communities. And as you do, I’m telling you this: Hold your heads up. Hold them high. Because, you know, politicians are not all the same. Tonight, I tell you that we will tear out the cancer of similarity that has invaded every tissue, every sinew and every vein of the body-politic in Ireland. And tonight, we begin that radical surgery.
“So, I am delighted to be able to tell the people of Ireland that Fine Gael has Got Back its Bottle. So, Let the Word go Out. Fine Gael has always been honest. We have always been decent. And from now on, let no-one say otherwise.
“And just as Galileo made a few revolutionary discoveries in his day. We, too, have made a few in ours. Like that when you find isolated incidents of dishonesty, tearing them out straight away, works way better than looking up the trees of North Dublin. But, unlike Galileo, we refuse to recant. The Earth does indeed go around the Sun. And Fine Gael has never been culturally corrupt.
“For us, the most important business is always the Public Business. We put the country first. We always have. We always will. We believe in what we can do for Ireland. Others pull their strokes to see what they can do Ireland for.
“From Michael Collins right here to Enda Kenny, Fine Gael Old and New, are descended from a common ancestry. An ancestry with Enterprise, Honesty, Democracy, Prosperity, Hope and Opportunity writ large.
“And, we’re going to make that work for Ireland. Through you. Through all of us. In the words of Bill Clinton, we’ll be giving people new choices rooted in old values.
“Charles de Gaulle said one time politics was too important a matter to be left to the politicians. He was right. That’s why, we’re bringing it back to the people. We will listen for the Energies that run through every parish, every town land, every village and every city of Ireland.
“We will Sense the Spirit that stirs our people and makes them restless. In a world where the major ideological battle is often between Coke and Pepsi, we want to stir the Nation’s Soul. To make people Restless again. Restless for what is right and decent. Restless for what is honest. Restless for what is good. Restless for Change.
“I put it to you – that Fine Gael must Become that spirit. The spirit that will connect the Essence of the Heart, the Essence of the Soul, with the Essence of both Politics and Policy. Because that is what is missing.
“Government may well be an Art. But it is also a Precious Obligation. And, let me tell you …. WE ARE OBLIGED. We are obliged to Campaign. And in the name of the people of this country, we are obliged to Win.
Values
Earlier today Richard Bruton discussed with you the Fine Gael values.
Equality of Opportunity
Enterprise and Reward
Security
Integrity
Hope
“So, what will this mean for the Child of our Time?
“Well, we believe that in Ireland Everyone should have an equal opportunity to reach their potential. It means, for example, that education should be a Basic Civil Right. Not the Random Privilege of the ‘right’ parenting, the -‘right’ culture or the ‘right’ class. It means that when parents need an education for their disabled child - regardless of age - that they will look to the Government to provide it. Not to the Courts. (And let me say for the record, Fine Gael led the Government that abolished third-level fees and we will never be bringing the back.) That Child of our Time must enjoy Childhood as a Human Right. High-octane tales of collisions with the law, might make great radio. But, they make for a lousy society. Especially when the Fugitives are 12 years old.
“So, when we hear our children on the public airwaves, I want them to sound not like punks from the Projects of New York, but like the bright, young kids they are, from Dublin, Cork or Limerick.
We must for their sake - and all our sakes - give them the Opportunity to strike a New, a Better Bargain with society.
“We must build an Ireland where we encourage enterprise and share reward. Right now, red tape and regulation are suffocating even our most entrepreneurial spirits. Our small businesses are crippled by an insurance system that both punishes them and exploits them.
“I’d say the same about Housing. Fine Gael must build an Ireland where everyone has the right to a home of their own. How can the current Administration dare to call itself a ‘Government’, when today, we have 6,000 people homeless in this country. 600 of them under five-years-old. And where 300 more, have made it to the hardy old age of six.
“Where there are 52,000 families – families not individuals – on the national housing waiting lists? Under FF and the PDs, they wait in vain.
“Our Child has a right to a safe Ireland. An Ireland with the family – in all its modern forms - at its very heart. To keep that Child safe, we must build an Ireland where there is not just plenty of LAW. But, where there is plenty of ORDER.
“An Ireland where the Minister for Justice doesn’t take to the public airwaves to tell us that he didn’t bother reporting to the Gardai a crime against his own family – because after all – what would be the point?
“We must create an Ireland where, when our Child leaves the house for a night out with friends, we can be sure that he or she will return safe and unharmed. Right now, Ireland’s alcohol problem is costing 2.2 billion euro a year. Not to mention the human devastation caused by terror, by injury, even death.
“I want the Child of our Time to be able, within reason, to build a home on her family’s land. Her people’s land. To keep her connection with her own people, her own place. I want to end the kind of Government that seems intent on severing people’s ties with their own place, not building them.
“I want to stop the Erosion of the People from the Land. To rebuild communities – real communities. Rural and Urban. There must be Life in our communities, no matter how remote. I want to build ‘communities’ in the new ‘Deserted Villages’ – the housing developments that have sprung up everywhere in the Dublin commuter belt so-called . A Dublin commuter belt that stretches all the way from Carlow to Gorey, from Cavan to Dundalk.
“I want our Child – who is all of our children - to have Faith in politics. I want to uncover in her and in all our children – The Politician Within. I want Fine Gael to move and to inspire her. To make her understand that the public has a right to expect the highest standards from those who would seek – who would dare to seek – to represent them.
“I want to give her an understanding of the power and the impact of her vote. And how that vote can make or break a government.
“I want to inspire this child to recognise the power of change and the capacity to harness it. Because as Oscar Wilde put it – ‘the only thing we know about human nature is that it changes’. Change is the only thing we can predict.
“And what will we do for her so that in womanhood, she can work with Change?
“Well, we’ll give her and all the women who come to us, a real role in the new Fine Gael. Fine Gael has always been a party for women. And we will be again.
“Already, we’ve been looking at ways of addressing the gender issue and of making politics more relevant, accessible and attractive to Irishwomen today. But, this must be A New Kind of Politics.
“All over the world, women have come to detest the Reductionism and Triumphalism of politics. They despair of its dishonesty. Its disconnection from the heart. It’s rejection of soul. They see a Political System. A System that conspires - albeit unwittingly - to freeze the status quo and turn back the tide of change.
“I want to offer women here, and everywhere in Ireland, a chance to take part in the politics not of Degeneration, but of Transformation. I want to hear their Truth from them. I want to Re-engage them in the idea of politics as an ‘Agent of Change for the Better’. An agent to bring Meaning, Purpose and Significance to Public Life and all it represents. And, I need your help to do it.
“And so, as Fine Gael stands on the Threshold of Transformation, the world stands on the brink of war. I want to make it quite clear that Fine Gael is resolutely opposed to any unilateral action against Iraq. Unlike others, we stand by the United Nations, not out of Convenience. But out of Principle.
“Because, despite Fianna Fail and the PDs great zeal over the Nice Referendum, they are Johnny-come-Latelys to what the philosophers call – the European Thing.
“When Fianna Fail looked inward, Fine Gael looked out and to the East, to embrace the radical, inclusive philosophies of Schuman, Adenauer and de Gasperi. And, today, we are still proud, committed Europeans.
“Losing 60 million people in two world conflicts leaves Europe well placed to talk about war as the option of last resort. I want Ireland to be right up there in any future European discussions on world security.
“I want us to be one of the architects of future EU defence arrangements, so that the role of non-NATO countries can be properly respected, in whatever new arrangements may emerge. In the meantime, we urge caution, patience and Peace.
Conclusion
“So tonight, I offer you blood, sweat and tears. And so much more. This battle for the soul of politics is one that we will fight street by street, house by house, family by family. Yes. ‘The hour is late, and our agenda is long’. But, as Kennedy said – The Tide Is Turned.
“Today its Fianna Fail - PDs 38%, Fine Gael - Labour 38%.
THIS GAME IS ON.
“But before we go tonight, I want to leave you with a story.
“There was once an Emperor who lived in a distant land. In a distant time. And he learned that there was a man in his kingdom – a wise man – who knew things. He knew when the winds blew, and what messages they carried between the countries. He knew the secrets of the bird-song. He saw events unfolding in the clouds.
“But then, the Emperor heard that this wise man could read another man’s mind. So, he summoned him to his palace.
“Is it true you know about the wind? Yes Majesty.
“And the Birdsong? Yes.
“And the Clouds? Yes again Majesty.
“And what of the minds of men? This too is true.
“Well, tell me this, said the Emperor: I have in my hands behind me, a bird. Is it dead or alive? The wise man wondered about his answer. He worried that if he were to say – the bird is alive – the Emperor might kill it out of spite. So, he looked and he thought. And the Emperor waited.
“After a long time, the wise man smiled and spoke. He said…. Majesty, I know now. The answer. It is in your hands.
“My friends, for Fine Gael, the answer is always in our hands.
ENDS
