Enda Kenny Gets More Popular By The Day

It's been an incredible week for the Taoiseach

Around this time last year, Enda Kenny shocked observers of Irish politics by seeing off a challenge from Richard Bruton for the leadership of Fine Gael.

The general consensus was that while the party was doing well in the polls, it was being held back by Kenny, who was wildly unpopular with voters.

What a difference a year makes!

Because the Mayo man has taken to life as Taoiseach in a manner beyond most people's expectations.

And as the Dail broke up for the summer recess last week, Kenny had many reasons to smile.

The latest opinion poll shows that he is now the most popular party leader in the country, with a satisfaction rating of 53%, a massive jump of 16 points since February, and his highest rating since taking over as party leader in 2002.

That survey was conducted at the start of the week as controversy over the closure of some services at Roscommon General hospital raged.

If the survey was conducted at the weekend, his stock is sure to have risen even higher.

Mr Kenny has won widespread acclaim for his speech during a Dail debate on the Cloyne Report into the handling of clerical child abuse allegations in Co. Cork.

Using unprecedented language from an Irish Taoiseach, he lambasted the Vatican for what he said was its obstruction of justice for abused children, accusing the most senior people in the Catholic Church of looking at the rape of children with "the gimlet eye of a Canon lawyer".

"The Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism - the narcissism - that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day," he said.

"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or "managed" to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and "reputation".

In a powerful warning to the Vatican, he said the country would not allow canon law to have any legitimacy over and above the civil law of the lands.

"This is the Republic of Ireland 2011. A republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities; of proper civic order; where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version, of a particular kind of 'morality', will no longer be tolerated or ignored."

As a practicing Catholic, his speech was all the more powerful, and he evoked the horror of abuse victims in small towns who had to live in their communities and watch their attackers enjoy elevated status or even presiding at their weddings.

The speech gained coverage around the world for its "astonishing" language and "unprecedented denunciation of the Holy See".

At home, it won praise not just from the public, but from senior church figures including some bishops.

It boosted his political standing, all the more so because it was devoid of any party political spin, sensationalism or hype.

One victim Marie Collins said it was "everything I wanted to hear our Government say for many years".

Historians say the speech marked the dawn of a new era in Ireland-Vatican relations, where church and state are completely separated.

The speech cemented Kenny's already burgeoning reputation, but by the end of the week he had secured the icing on the cake.

At a summit of EU leaders dealing with the debt crisis, Kenny secured a cut in the interest rate charged on Ireland's bailout which will save the country one billion euro per year on its repayments.

It was one of his key election pledges, and represented a victory for Kenny over French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as the deal was reached with no strings attached, despite the French leader's prior insistence that Ireland would need to change its corporate tax rate in return.

The two leaders clashed angrily at a previous EU summit in March on the issue.

But Enda Kenny told reporters after last Thursday's meeting that the debate on Irish taxes was over.

"C'est fini", he actually said.