Highs and lows in Taoiseach’s historic week

American President Barack Obama looked right at home in the company of Taoiseach Enda Kenny at Farmleigh House yesterday, after the Castlebar native presented him with a hurley, in the hope of testing his reported sporting prowess.


Kenny’s Céad Míle FΡiltes for Queen, Prime Minister and President with sad SlΡn for Garret


Áine Ryan

PUCKING a hurley outside Farmleigh. It is not the kind of move normally expected from a former GAA midfielder. But then this is no ordinary ball player.
In the middle of a storm yesterday  – and not just one generated by the media – there was Enda Kenny fooling around and having the craic with the most powerful leader in the world, Barack Hussein Obama.
Minutes earlier the missus, Fionnuala O’Kelly put her arm around Barack for the photocall, with a confidence and spontaneity that even beat that of the US’s celebrated First Couple.  
What a week of stately serendipity. What a week of irony upon irony. Before his appointment last February, Enda Kenny was the subject of one media attack after another. Indeed, Enda Kenny was the subject of a serious heave by some of his own party lieutenants less than a year ago.
Now,  Taoiseach Enda Kenny, this country‘s leader and statesman, welcomed Queen Elizabeth 11 on her historic visit to Ireland with a political panache that could not be learned at the Communications Clinic.
Mr Kenny said the Queen’s laying of a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance on the first day of her visit (Tuesday 17) was ‘symbolism beyond words’ with the way she bowed her head after she laid the wreath ‘exceptionally powerful’.
And, in the same week, the Mayo man welcomed the British Prime Minister, David Cameron and then, poignantly, said farewell to a much-loved former Fine Gael Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald – the orchestrator of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
By all appearances, the hand of history sat lightly on Enda Kenny’s shoulders as he lithely managed three momentous state occasions in one week. The fact that David Cameron, and his Foreign Secretary, William Hague, was part of the high-powered political cocktail ensured that this historic week was more than symbolic. Even if that symbolism involved the octogenarian Queen Elizabeth wearing a dress with  2,091 hand-sewn embroidered shamrocks to the State banquet in Dublin Castle on Wednesday night last.
After the pomp and ceremony of Dublin Castle, real politik was the theme the following morning when Taoiseach Kenny and Prime Minister Cameron met at Government Buildings.
Mr Cameron said the relationship between the two countries was about trade and investment and the economy and they were working very closely together, including in the European Union.
“Above all, it is a relationship of opportunity. Of two very close neighbours and very close friends who share a huge amount together and I think there are great opportunities for us to do even more things in the future together.”
The British Prime Minister also commented later on the death, on Thursday morning, of Garret Fitzgerald, whom he said was ‘in politics for all the right reasons‘.
Enda Kenny had already told the DΡil that the former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader was a ‘true patriot’ and an ‘icon of decency and honour in public life’.
Mr Kenny said he had ‘made an unparalleled contribution to public life in Ireland’.
“A truly remarkable man who made a truly remarkable contribution to Ireland.” Taoiseach Kenny said.
As he read the first Lesson at his late leader’s State funeral service on Sunday afternoon, he was clearly aware of the big shoes he must fill. Even if Garret the Good was renowned for wearing odd socks – and even odd shoes – during his colourful political life.