When I try to visualise the expected Fine Gael minority government, the spectre of Jonathan Swift gets in the way. He tends to eclipse Enda Kenny in the picture. This is not because of the remedy for poverty Swift espoused in A Modest Proposal — that the citizens ought to eat their own babies, “whether stewed, baked or boiled” — but because of something he wrote on the walls of my home town.
While perambulating Bandon one 18th-century afternoon, the satirist and clergyman espied an injunction, anonymously written, that “a Turk, a Jew or an atheist may live in this town, but not a Papist”. Putting quill to wall, Swift rejoined: “He that wrote this did write it well, for the same is written on the gates of hell.”
While Dail Eireann may not be quite hellish, it is about to serve as purgatory; a halfway house for some essential political purgation between general elections. No saints need apply. With Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein all facing leadership upheavals and Fianna Fail requiring the appointment of a deputy leader, the incoming government will provide a breathing space for parties to regroup and expiate their political sins before returning to the hustings. The new administration will commence in countdown mode once the clock starts ticking with the allocation of the ministers’ seals of office.
Few of us fall for Fianna Fail’s wide-eyed protestations that its negotiated support for the minority government is entirely motivated by the common good. Leinster House’s wiliest operators have manoeuvred Fine Gael into a corner, in a demonstration of passive-aggressive Machiavellianism that would put Niccolo’s prince himself to shame. To borrow and twist Willie O’Dea’s phrase, Fianna Fail wants to pocket the 30 pieces of silver while Fine Gael is forced to wear the crown of thorns.
For who would want to be in government now? Apart from the Dail’s incalculable mathematics, the much vaunted economic recovery is proving alarmingly stuttery. The Department of Finance has warned, in its periodic Stability Programme Update for the EU Commission, that the international outlook — including a wobbly China and a threatened Brexit — poses the biggest threat to the Irish economy since the crash.
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Domestically, income tax and VAT collections have been described as “somewhat disappointing” for the first three months of this year. Department store retail sales were down 4% in March, motor sales were down 2.7% and house prices outside Dublin fell by 0.2%. Fingers crossed that these are indicators of a mere blip and not the beginning of the end of an overhyped, short-lived upturn.
Against this sobering canvas, the new government will take power with one hand tied behind its back. If it is to survive beyond a year, much of its energies must be spent on the pursuit of consensus. This means more talking shops in the chamber and in the committee rooms, more time-delaying expert groups, and more long-fingering reports. Already there are signs of an overflowing in-tray of water charges and public-pay commissions, to add to the promised commission of investigation into abuse of children and vulnerable adults at a southeast foster home and the long-stymied IBRC commission.
The inevitable consequence will be that fewer decisions are made. This is a dismal prospect for citizens who are homeless, encumbered with negative equity or unaffordable rent rates, frightened of falling ill because of the dysfunction and inequality of the health service, or worried about looming industrial-relations unrest. Add the ideologically mixed new Seanad to a cacophonous Dail opposition, sprinkled with parliamentary parties champing at the bit, and the cost of repaying compliant Irish Water customers, and it is hard to be optimistic about the productivity of this Dail.
Certain decisions will have to be made, though, and made soon. For the sake of his party, Enda Kenny will have to resign as leader. Fine Gael has maintained a dignified silence about Kenny since his hapless election performance. This omerta will not last once he is leading a government born on the back foot. He needs to go by Christmas to allow his successor time to settle into the role before the next election.
The deal with Fianna Fail provides for a review in two years. For “review” read “election”, because this clause has all the appearance of an engineered San Andreas faultline under the feet of the new government. Failure to agree in 2018 will trigger a general election. The choreography Fianna Fail has embroidered into the timeline is not exactly subtle.
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In the event of the government collapsing, Fine Gael, under an established new leader, will be able to distance itself from the sellout on its water-charges principles by blaming Kenny. The climbdown has not only disaffected some of his own party but it has infuriated his former coalition partners Labour, who paid the largest price for Irish Water, with the loss of 30 seats in the election. Labour owes Fine Gael no fidelity.
The contest to replace Kenny began on Thursday when Leo Varadkar denounced the water charges U-turn as wrong and contrary to the public interest. If Fianna Fail felt wounded by the swipe, it was only collateral damage. Kenny was the real target.
Such power play will become more prevalent and will cause increased instability once the government is in power. All the more reason for Kenny to go earlier than 2018, the date being touted for his departure.
Fine Gael also needs a new deputy leader since James Reilly lost his Dail seat. This gives the party a chance to reinvent itself. Fianna Fail will have factored this into its calculations. Now that his own parliamentary party has grown too big to squeeze into Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine, Micheál Martin needs to appoint a deputy leader. The odds are he will pick a Dublin-based TD or a woman, to herald the party’s arrival in the 21st century.
Labour faces a messy succession. Because the party rules stipulate that only TDs may be candidates, the choice is stark. The dilemma was epitomised by Joan Burton’s insistence that there must be a leadership election and, if needs be, she will nominate her bête noir, Alan Kelly, to ensure this happens.
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Sinn Fein, too, must wrestle with succession. Gerry Adams cannot endure forever. An opportune time for him to go would be after this month’s assembly elections. The party’s Niall Ó Donnghaile announced after his election to the Seanad that he intends publishing a bill to extend voting rights to the north in presidential elections. This would potentially boost the 243,030 first-preference votes Martin McGuinness got in the 2011 election. Could the allure of becoming Uachtaran na hEireann for the 1921 centenary persuade Adams to resign as leader?
The next government may not do much for the people but it will transform the political landscape. It will be akin to flying to the Isle of Man in one of those bumpy little planes fondly known in the 1990s as Vomit Comets. Expect the journey to be turbulent, and not to go very far.