Who thinks Brian Lenehan should resign given his illness?

gent9662

Is it fair to him or the country by having him in the role of Minister for Finance?

My view is that Pancreatic cancer is such an aggressive form of cancer that it needs a sufferer to have 100% focus on getting better. Given the state of the country is he not better to stand down and act in an advisory capacity rather than putting such a workload on himself.

enda1

Yes I think he should step down from the ministerial post, but hasn't this been debated to death already?

jhegarty

Dear god no , he is the only one of them I have any trust for.

Nidot

I think he's probably the best man for the position currently , as in ability wise. But I do have my doubts about it, in that for any person to be suffering from such a serious helth condition it has to affect the quality of their work and the workload which they take on.

It would potentially be better to have him in some sort of advisory role.

Liam Byrne

His illness would be irrelevant if he could do the job.

He should resign because of his ill-thought-out guarantee of Anglo, and the subsequent ill-thought-out bailout whereby the banks continue to give him and us the two-fingers because he didn't put any legislation in there to ensure that they would do what he wanted after he gave them €20 billion plus a €10 overpayment bailout on their assets.

Taxipete29

Liam Byrne wrote: »

His illness would be irrelevant if he could do the job.

He should resign because of his ill-thought-out guarantee of Anglo, and the subsequent ill-thought-out bailout whereby the banks continue to give him and us the two-fingers because he didn't put any legislation in there to ensure that they would do what he wanted after he gave them €20 billion plus a €10 overpayment bailout on their assets.

Illness is not irrelevant.

He should resign.

rightwingdub

Who would replace him who has the balls to stand up to the unions, Lenihan has played a blinder when standing up to the trade unions in the last couple of months, the only person I can think of is Harney.

Shea O'Meara

rightwingdub wrote: »

Who would replace him who has the balls to stand up to the unions, Lenihan has played a blinder when standing up to the trade unions in the last couple of months, the only person I can think of is Harney.

I've heard this before and in reference to Government. Anyone could do an equally bad job, maybe even a better one;) I don't understand the sense of dismay at the thoughts of replacing either Lenihan or his party.
Lenihan played it blind alright. And walking out on talks, leaving the Public Sector on a work to rule, which is currently under discussion for expansion, is not standing up, but rather turning a blind eye and hoping it will go away.
Harney is all mouth and no trousers. I want to apoligise to all concerned for the imagery.

Liam Byrne

Taxipete29 wrote: »

Illness is not irrelevant.

His illness is irrelevant given that he made serious cock-ups prior to his more recent "successes" and should have resigned because of those cock-ups.

ANXIOUS

Who is the op talking about?

smellslikeshoes

Resign because of his Illness? No definitely not. If it starts stopping him from doing his job to the best of his abilties I'm sure he will step down but until then I don't see any reason for him to. The man himself is the only person who can decide if he is well enough to do the job.

mikehn

As a long time FF supporter I am utterly dismayed at the party performance.
At a time of national crisis the country needs strong decisive leadership. Brian Lenihans strong stance to the unions referred to by a previous poster seems to me to be as a result of being backed into a corner and being forced to take unpalatable decisions.
I no longer have confidence in them to lead the country effectivly.
And no senior politician should be allowed to continue with the distraction of a serious illness, even if there was only the slightest possibility of it affecting their judgement the country is in too serious a state to take the chance.
He said he will step down if he feels that he cannot continue in the position, I do not believe the decision should be left to him.

rightwingdub

mikehn wrote: »

As a long time FF supporter I am utterly dismayed at the party performance.
At a time of national crisis the country needs strong decisive leadership. Brian Lenihans strong stance to the unions referred to by a previous poster seems to me to be as a result of being backed into a corner and being forced to take unpalatable decisions.
I no longer have confidence in them to lead the country effectivly.
And no senior politician should be allowed to continue with the distraction of a serious illness, even if there was only the slightest possibility of it affecting their judgement the country is in too serious a state to take the chance.
He said he will step down if he feels that he cannot continue in the position, I do not believe the decision should be left to him.

Well I'm a former member of Fianna Fail and one of the reasons why I left the party was because theys tood for nothing and were unwilling to stand up to narrow minded vested interests ie unions, publicans, farmers, medical profession, teachers etc. Who can replace him, perhaps John McGuinness, I do admire his anti public sector stance.

zootroid

Lenihan is probably the only member of FF that I have any respect for. I admire his stance on the budget, but think this was only possible because of Cowen's incompetence. I still think the budget could have been fairer, I don't think the top civil servants have been hit hard enough. Losing your bonus is not a wage cut. A bonus should never be considered as part of your salary.

I completely disagree with his stance on Anglo, I think it should have been allowed to fail. I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of why it wasn't allowed to do so.

So, in my opinion, there are a lot of negatives, and just a small positive. But he is still far better than any alternative that exists within FF.

hoody

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Resign because of his Illness? No definitely not. If it starts stopping him from doing his job to the best of his abilties I'm sure he will step down but until then I don't see any reason for him to. The man himself is the only person who can decide if he is well enough to do the job.

This.

If he feels he's able to continue in the position, he should. He and only he will really know how well/unwell he's feeling and to suggest he should give it up automatically because of the diagnosis is would be unfair and completely insulting to anyone suffering from a long term illness.

Sand

As Liam has noted already, he should resign, on the basis of his performance - his illness is irrelevant.

If he could persuade the rest of them to resign too, that would be nice.

jimmycrackcorm

Liam Byrne wrote: »

His illness would be irrelevant if he could do the job.

He should resign because of his ill-thought-out guarantee of Anglo, and the subsequent ill-thought-out bailout whereby the banks continue to give him and us the two-fingers because he didn't put any legislation in there to ensure that they would do what he wanted after he gave them €20 billion plus a €10 overpayment bailout on their assets.

He should resign if it could put an end to posts that say what he shouldn't have done but offer no better alternatives. You know the kind of ill-though-out posts that don't even try to speculate what the knock-on effects if Anglo had been let rot. The banking system, is after all, a game of Dominos, once one card gets knocked down then the next few follow....

Red_Marauder

his illness is irrelevant.

Of course his illness isn't irrelevant. What a bizarre thing to say about someone in a position of such importance while dealing with Cancer. Lets not bury our heads in the sand.

However, Lenihan's performance in Government appears totally unchanged and I see no reason why he should resign. Watching his Dáil performances, you wouldn't know there was anything the matter. So why not let him just get on with it?

Sand

He should resign if it could put an end to posts that say what he shouldn't have done but offer no better alternatives. You know the kind of ill-though-out posts that don't even try to speculate what the knock-on effects if Anglo had been let rot. The banking system, is after all, a game of Dominos, once one card gets knocked down then the next few follow....

Go on then, speculate what the knock-on effects would have been if Anglo had been let rot.

Seriously.

thetonynator

he's holding the country together for the last 18 months, if he goes we're f*cked.

Sand

Maybe we should form a cult of worship for him. We can build a statue of him down in Phoenix Park.

Give it a rest - hes been a terrible MoF. Woeful. Didnt even read briefing materials when he was making massive immense decisions for the future of this state. Let alone the disatrous NAMA policy. All hes got going for him is the typical Irish peasant mentality of doffing caps to the Big Man. Fianna Fail run this country for a reason it seems.