Well, it’s finally happened. Fianna Fail has actually come out and said they were wrong. No, hell hasn’t frozen over, believe it or not.
The Irish Times reports that Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin apologised to the Irish people for his party’s role in the events that led to the worst economic crash that the country has ever seen.
Speaking at the Fianna Fail Ardfheis this weekend, Martin apologised for all the mistakes that Fianna Fail had made.
“It is not enough to point to the worst world recession in 80 years and the Eurozone crisis. Nor to point to the fact that other parties were demanding policies which would have made things worse – that’s for them to answer for,” he said, addressing 4,000 delegates in the RDS.
“We were in Government and we should have acted differently. We made mistakes. We got things wrong. And we are sorry for that. No equivocation. No half-apology. Just the plain, unvarnished truth,” he added.
Mr Martin said that the Irish people did what they were entitled to do in the general election last year, stating: “People were angry and they showed it, delivering a historic defeat for us. We fully acknowledge the scale of the defeat.”
He said that in order to recover, the party needed to work for a “deep and real renewal” of the party itself and in politics as a whole.
His speech was met by a standing ovation.
Now, maybe we’re just being overly cynical here, but why couldn’t he just address the public rather than delegates of his own party? Why not broadcast a televised apology?
We reckon it could be a long, long time before Fianna Fail are able to recover from this…
