KENNY FINDS WHAT HE IS LOOKING FOR

HCHIEF CORRESPONDENT IS swansong, if there was going to be one, had been played the night before. And as Enda Kenny took the stage at a breakfast meeting at the Chicago council on Global Affairs, it was clear that the out-going Taoiseach was on the wind-down.

‘Yes I was at the concert last night,’ he quipped, referring to his rumoured attendance at U2’s gig in Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium on Sunday night.

‘My favourite song is the one that goes, ‘‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’’.’

There was loud laughter in the room, the Taoiseach himself chuckling away with the look of a man who has already cleared out his desk in Leinster House.

He had attended the concert, part of U2’s North America tour, with his son, who is on a J1 visa in the States. ‘I came here three years ago to Chicago and really enjoyed the experience,’ he said. ‘When I went down to meet Mayor Emanuel [Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s one-time White House Chief of Staff] he gave me a CD of Springsteen’s and on it was written: “From one Boss to another.”

‘So, after 42 years as an elected public official, 15 years as leader of the party and six years as Taoiseach, I am happy to pass on responsibility to the next generation given the fact that we have retrieved our sovereignty, we have restored our economic independence and we have given our flag back to our people with a measure of dignity and respect.’

There was a defiance in his tone, and as he surveyed the room with a look of quiet satisfaction, there was a stirring round of applause. The audience, business and civic leaders including the Seanad’s Chicagobased senator Billy Lawless, seemed to be taking it all in.

It was a speech, remarked some, that was similar to the one he recently delivered when he visited Justin Trudeau in Toronto. The script, one that focused on issues including climate, immigration and Brexit, hadn’t changed.

We are living in uncertain times… Brexit was a bad idea… Ireland, as a member of the EU must negotiate on that basis.

‘When article 50 was written, no-one ever expected a country to leave the EU,’ he told the Chicago audience. ‘But now it’s happening and this process is a step into the unknown because so many things were not thought of, so many things were not considered, the engagement of political parties was not the way it should be, citizens were not informed of the truth of the facts on so many of the issues were side-lined.

‘And now, we face clouds of confusion and consternation.’

For the out-going Taoiseach, who later joined business leaders for a prime filet mignon lunch, the clouds seem to be lifting. His legacy, one that will be debated for some time, is perhaps foremost even in his own mind.

‘In politics, it takes a sense of understanding that you can’t be right all the time,’ he said in his speech

‘You have to make choices, many of them are very difficult but you have to have the humility to say I didn’t have all the answers and nobody has.

‘We don’t have that degree of certainty.’