Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Yesterday evening an online news story caught my attention. The article concerned Fine Gael’s response to news which had emerged earlier in the day that the party leader, Enda Kenny, had met partners of businessman Norman Turner in 1995. Norman Turner is a significant person in Irish media and political circles at the moment after Phil Hogan, a Fine Gael politician, raised concerns over the assistance Mr Turner received from Bertie Ahern, now Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fail, with his passport application in 1994, due to the fact that Mr Turner made a donation of $10,000 to the party at the time.

Yesterday’s report highlighted the farcical nature of news coverage of what is essentially a non-story. Noel Whelan pointed out in Saturday’s Irish Times (subscription required) that there was nothing to the allegation given that “Turner was automatically entitled to a passport because his mother was born in Cork.” Whelan points out that the entire excercise was nothing more than a PR masterclass by Fine Gael:

Phil Hogan is a shrewd operator and he showed considerable parliamentary and political skill last Wednesday night. His timing was perfect. Earlier that day he got confirmation in a reply to a parliamentary question that, in 1994, Ahern’s office had been involved in processing a passport application for Norman Turner, one of the businessmen behind the proposal at the time to build a casino near the Phoenix Park.

Instead of letting Enda Kenny use this new information in leaders’ questions that afternoon, Hogan decided to keep it so it could be deployed to greater effect during the Dáil debate on the Mahon tribunal. In doing so he was forgoing coverage in the early evening news bulletins, but as a result guaranteed a greater impact in later broadcasts and in the following morning’s newspapers. However, not even Hogan could have hoped for the whirlwind that his story generated.

…

On foot of Hogan’s claim the main RTÉ evening news bulletin led with the headline that the Taoiseach had new questions to answer. This was followed by live reporting from the front of Government Buildings which revisited the controversy about the Phoenix Park casino, repeated how Turner had given a donation to Fianna Fáil, reminded viewers of the suggestion of lodgements of foreign currencies into the Taoiseach’s accounts in the 1990s, and then reported on Hogan’s new information, which it was claimed was serious and significant.

There followed an extended clip featuring soundbites from Hogan, who repeated all these surrounding details and implied that coincidences in timing suggested nefarious things had gone on. Then it was back live to Government Buildings for even more reporting and a promise that this story would run and run. A denial from the Taoiseach’s spokesperson that there was anything improper about the passport application was reported at the top of the story but was quickly lost in the overall suggestion that this was a significant twist to the Ahern finances controversy.

The passport story was followed in the news bulletin by another report about the rest of the Dáil debate on the Mahon tribunal, which ran right up to the commercial break. The people of Arklow have some entitlement to feel aggrieved that, as a result of the extended coverage of this passport story, the loss of 360 jobs in their town was relegated to the second half of the bulletin.

…

The next day’s newspapers ran thunderclap headlines suggesting this passport “bombshell” was a seismic development. Bundling it with the (much more significant) story of Ahern having to correct his earlier statements about when the Revenue could rule on his tax compliance, some newspapers presented the Taoiseach as being at the centre of a political crisis the like of which hadn’t been seen since the early 1980s.

But as Whelan points out by lunchtime the following day, the “bombshell” turned out to be nothing more than a firecracker due to the fact that:

the only involvement of Ahern’s office was to send Turner’s application to the Passport Office and then to get it back to Turner. In doing so they were using a designated procedure which TDs and Senators often use to deliver and collect passport applications more speedily.

One wonders why the fact that Enda Kenny met with business partners of Norman Turner has garnered any coverage given that it is simply much ado about nothing.

Fine Gael will eventually come to regret their continued hounding of Bertie Ahern when they should be focusing on issues like the economy or the health system. The Taoiseach might be a charmer, but his popularity will wane just as fast as Ireland’s economic miracle unravels, as it will due to whatever financial improprieties Bertie is alleged to have carried out.

It should be noted Bertie Ahern only has himself to blame for all the coverage he has garnered. As Noel Whelan points out in his column:

The Taoiseach must carry the primary responsibility for the fact that he is currently haunted by controversy about his personal finances. It was he who accepted moneys in inappropriate circumstances in the 1990s. He has compounded the situation by being reluctant and truculent in providing information, not only to the tribunal but also to the media.

I believe that it is only a matter of time before Ahern stands down. However, despite what Fine Gael believe, the longer he stays, the more damage he does to his own reputation, than that of his party. Ahern will eventually succumb to what is known as ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ This character assassination is actually the best thing that could happen to Fianna Fail. The damage will have been done to the fallen leader as opposed to the political party who are facing into a difficult economic climate.

Bertie Ahern has and always will be a popular figure among the public - renowned as a “man of the people.” After his fall, his eventual successor will play the role of Marc Antony to that of Fine Gael’s Brutus in a scene straight out of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It will be shown that Bertie was a ‘man of the people’ and that those honourable men’s (Fine Gael and Labour) continued pursuit of him led him to fall on his own sword. The public will voice their displeasure at the opposition for what they deem a personal vendetta, buying Fianna Fail valuable time to try and dig the economy out of the difficult situation that it now finds itself in.

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