EXPOSED: KENNY’S SECRET SUMMIT
● Senior FG strategists roasted for election debacle ● Party attacked for ignoring rural Ireland, grey vote and for being too Tory
FINE Gael’s top brass gathered for a secret summit at a Dublin hotel yesterday to rake over the embers of a disastrous election campaign, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The Taoiseach arrived at the Maldron Hotel at Newland’s Cross on the M7 towards the end of the five-hour meeting. Director of elections Brian Hayes was there, along with senior strategists and officials and campaign directors from all 40 constituencies and chairmen of local organisations.
The talks were said to be ‘angry and confrontational’ at times and the election management team got a ‘roasting’. It has already been branded the ‘Cauldron at the Maldron’ by participants who spoke to the MoS.
In an open forum, party bosses attracted a barrage of criticism and were told Fine Gael had ignored the rural vote and the grey vote and failed to learn any lessons from the party’s poor local election results in 2014.
There was particularly vehement criticism of a ‘wholesale adoption of Tory
principles’, and Irish Water was raised repeatedly as a damaging influence on the campaign.
One activist from the floor condemned the party’s decision to accept a late endorsement from British Conservative prime minister David Cameron. The comments were met with wry laughter.
Party general secretary Tom Curran, overall director of elections Brian Hayes, and head of research and development Terry Murphy sat at the top table in the Joyce Room at the Maldron Hotel.
‘They got a roasting that is for sure. Brian Hayes was taking the heat big time,’ said a constituency director of elections who was at the meeting.
‘Kenny came in. Kenny looked shattered. He looked like an old man. We’re all tired but he looked bad,’ he said.
‘He was there to give us an update on government negotiations. He gave the mantra of where we are going to go from here, we’re talking to everybody, we’re the party of government. He said in a nutshell that we are talking to suitors, particularly the independents about forming a government.
‘But even then half us still believe they will form a coaltion with Fianna Fáil. So he didn’t give us much real information or satisfaction.
‘It’s an art Kenny has, a total art form that he can talk for 10 minutes and say nothing. He did not deal with the campaign, Brian Hayes took the brunt of that.’
It is understood that many of key party organisers from around the country had stayed in touch in recent months by means of a Whatsapp chat forum set up after a get-together in Brussels last year.
Party headquarters was upset when it recently discovered the forum existed and when it found out that the directors of elections were planning their own meeting to discuss the campaign’s failures.
At that point, Tom Curran decided to hold an official meeting in a bid to have some control over it, the source said. It was agreed at the end of the meeting to hold an internal investigation into the election campaign, which would have input from the parliamentary party.
‘Kenny came in, he looked shattered’
The inquiry will be chaired by Marianne Coy, the former president of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, who also spoke at the meeting. She is a member of the Collins Institute, a think-tank linked to Fine Gael.
Witnesses said Mr Curran opened the meeting and then the constituency directors of elections spoke in turn with frank and sometimes highly critical barbs directed at the top table. Mr Hayes, as overall director of elections, attracted some strong criticism.
‘A couple of us said that he was out of touch. He is an MEP based in Brussels, how could he know what was going on here? How could he know what was going on in rural Ireland? How could he understand what voters outside the pale wanted?’ said one attendee.
It was pointed out that another senior campaign manager, PR guru Mark Mortell, did not make an appearance.
There was a volume of criticisms about the neglect of rural Ireland during the campaign. One participant said: ‘It was an open forum, you can imagine some of the things that were said. Basically that they had forgotten rural Ireland, that they had forgotten the grey vote and that they didn’t learn from the lessons of the local elections in 2014.’
There was a lot of criticism of the ‘Tory influence’ on the Fine Gael campaign. A number of strategists had travelled to Britain to observe the Conservatives in last year’s election and attempted to apply their policies here.
‘It was asked who in the name of God decided that it was a good idea to copy the Tory party for an election in Ireland? Sure they’re hated here,’ said a source who was at the meeting.
There was particularly voluble
‘How could Brian Hayes know what’s going on?’
criticism of a decision to leak a letter of endorsement of Enda Kenny from David Cameron to a newspaper. ‘Who authorised Cameron to write a letter?’ shouted one participant from the floor.
There was no answer to this question, the men at the top table ‘kept their heads down’.
‘No, no answer, head down, head down,’ said one director of elections of the top table’s reaction.
‘Terry Murphy went through the polls, and how there was a dip in the polls of three points in the final few days, and how he doesn’t know how that happened.
‘Many of us in the room believed Enda Kenny is to blame, that he is a weak leader, but there wasn’t anybody willing to say that too loudly,’ said the source.
‘The general consensus was that we had a great opportunity to do better than we did. We’re after four bad finishes to the last four elections – locals, Presidential, and two general elections. All bad finishes. And we’re trying to figure things out.
‘Brian Hayes looked tired and wounded. The strategists, Curran, Hayes, Mark Mortell, who wasn’t there, have all seen their currency in the party diminished.
‘There will be an internal review involving the parliamentary party.’
Some local organisers were said to be angry that Mr Hayes and Mr Curran organised the meeting as they are two of the culprits responsible for the election debacle. Fine Gael was down 26 seats from its 2011 showing of 76 seats. Added to a 30-seat loss for Labour, the morale of the former coalition is very low.
A senior Fine Gael strategist who was at the meeting believed it went well. He said of Mr Kenny: ‘He’s at his best in this sort of situation, he works well under pressure.’
He also played down the angry reactions. ‘There was not a great deal of angst, there was a good healthy discussion. Because of the lack of knowledge about who is going to go into government.
‘The people in the room said they wanted to go into government, but didn’t want to go into government at any cost. There is going to be an independent review into the campaign and into the 12 months that preceded it.
Another senior party strategist, who was also at the meeting, gave his opinion on where Fine Gael’s campaign had gone wrong.
‘We had a bad start and a bad finish. But the truth of the matter is that no one saw us at 26%. There was an issue over whether, after a number of years of austerity, we turned things around after the local elections and we didn’t. Irish Water was a big issue, there is no doubt about it, and it is still there. The whole austerity stuff, they were waiting for us in the long grass.’
‘Austerity was waiting in the long grass’