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THE FORMER TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny has said that the golf gate controversy is “in the past” and that it is time to “move on” from what happened.
Speaking on The Late Late Show last night, Kenny said “everyone learned lessons” from what happened.
Last August, the Oireachtas Golf Society hosted an outing in Clifden where members and guests played golf before dinner at the Station House Hotel.
A total of 81 people attended a dinner in a hotel room despite Covid-19 regulations not allowing such gatherings, with a partition erected to divide the room.
Among those who attended the golf gate dinner were then-Minister Dara Calleary, then-EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, Supreme Court Justice Séamus Woulfe, former RTÉ host Sean O’Rourke.
Kenny played golf as part of the event, but did not attend dinner.
Speaking last night, Kenny said that he told organizers ahead of time that he would not be attending the dinner.
The first day I went back and played golf and had my son with me. We played golf with the captain of the Oireachtas team and a well-known person at RTÉ. We had a beautiful round of golf, a beautiful evening. We were one of the last groups to leave, I went back to the parking lot, the place was empty and I went home.
When asked about the reaction to the event and the uproar it generated, Kenny says it “took it all out of my head.”
“Everything has happened and it has already been solved, I am moving to a different plane now.”
Host Ryan Tubridy pushed the issue further, and Kenny said it wasn’t necessarily about the problem going away because he wasn’t concerned.
“I told them beforehand that I would not be there, but the mood was such that that was the result. But that’s a thing of the past now, it’s a lesson everyone learned, keep going. ”
Kenny also spoke about his retirement from politics before last year’s general election, having been elected 45 years earlier.
He said he felt it was not his role to comment on current political events. Kenny, a former teacher, was asked about the government’s decision to move to an age-based priority model for vaccination in most of the country.
Kenny said it is not his place to comment on the decision, but rather it is about “vaccinating our entire population and getting the job done as quickly as possible.”
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No presidential ambitions
The former Fine Gael leader has also been suggested as a possible presidential candidate, but when asked about this, he said he would not be interested in the position.
“I used to enjoy visiting President McAleese and President Ó hÚigín, President Higgins in Áras an Úacharáin because you have to go there to give them an update on events at the house.
After my years in politics, there is always a life ahead, and I am the type of person who looks ahead and to the next horizon. And it is not in Áras an Úacharáin, I prefer to go visit there and not be a tenant.
When asked if he had any political regrets, Kenny said he was “far from perfect” but has no regrets.
He said his focus in government was to “move the economy” from where it was and “restore respect” for the country and give it “financial integrity.”
When asked if years of austerity budgets under the EU-IMF Troika had led austerity to widening and generational inequality, Kenny said:
“I would love to have been able to do so much more to eliminate poverty, to have more equality to address the problems of all those things that you mentioned, of course. But you won’t be able to do any of that unless you have a stable country that is capable of generating the capacity to do those things. “
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