Enda Kenny, hailed abroad, less so at home

Published on 8 October 2012 at 11:39

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In what is considered to be a major boost for Ireland’s image abroad, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has made the cover of Time magazine with an accompanying headline declaring: “The Celtic Comeback”. The influential American weekly discusses Enda Kenny's “rebuilding” of the Irish economy after its 2008 crash, and “what the rest of Europe can learn from him”. Since taking over asPrime minister of the crisis stricken country in 2011, Kenny, Time enthuses

… has pressed on with the sort of cuts in government services that have brought protesters onto the streets of Greece and Spain, countries that are faced with similar debt burdens. Kenny, however, has not had to deal with as many public protests over austerity measures, and that has given him more political room than his Greek and Spanish counterparts. Many voters and commentators have long considered Kenny to be a lightweight figure in the Irish political scene, but with Ireland’s GDP beginning to sneak upward once again Kenny may prove himself anything but the “fool” that his predecessor (Brian Cowen) called him in 2010.

Much of the national press is bemused by Time’s chirpy tone, given that under EU/ECB/IMF tutelage Ireland remains in the throes of mass unemployment (14.9%) and emigration (80,000 in the last 12 months). The Irish Independent leader avers

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Foreign praise is nice, but it will not erase domestic strife … The economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith once claimed ‘no society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable’. That unfortunately represents a far more appropriate summary of the state of the Irish nation than Time's ‘Celtic Comeback’ musings.

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