It might be the Titanic… but there’s no other boats left

Published: Thu 25 Jun 2020, 9:53 AM

Last updated: Thu 25 Jun 2020, 9:55 AM

You’d think with everything that’s been going on for the last few months – the aftermath of a general election, a massive health crisis, a fiscal catastrophe slowly unfolding – that Leinster House would have been a fairly frenzied place for the last few months.

Naturally the impact of Covid-19 means it has been a much more subdued environmental than normal: even though the crisis is creating its fair amount of political talking points, there simply haven’t been too many people on the premises at any one time.

Dáil sittings were slow to get back up and running after the election – especially when there was no immediate prospect of a government actually being formed – and when the official State advice was for people to avoid unnecessary travel, working from home wherever possible, most TDs decided to simply avoid Dublin entirely.

The subsequent relaxation of that advice, the return of general Dáil sittings and the advent of the special Covid-19 committee haven’t really impacted on that ethos: those outside Dublin largely choose to avoid the travel if they can get away with it. (No doubt it helps that the usual rules requiring TDs to be physically present in Leinster House, so as to qualify for their full travel allowance, have been waived throughout the duration of the travel restrictions.) All this means that Leinster House hasn’t had the same constant noise of gossip for the last few months; journalists like myself, whose stock in trade is to stalk the corridors on the hunt for gossip, have found the usual torrent of gossip cut down to a trickle.

That sense of remove – the blindness as to the lay of the land – is fuelling an odd anxiety for those within Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil these last few days. Now the Programme for Government is out, the negotiating has been done, and most of the hard yards of selling the deal have been made. Even though the verdict of the party members will not be known until Friday, the reality of a postal vote is that most of the ballots will already now have been cast. So now, in studied and nervous silence, we play the waiting game.

There are a few ways in which the Greens’ debate, on whether to ratify the Programme for Government, can be summarised. One is whether the party’s idealism – in cutting carbon emissions, in radically redesigning the transport system, in overhauling the agricultural industry – should give way to pragmatism, and compromise for the sake of power. Another is whether the pledges on paper are a sufficient basis to reappoint Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (when it comes to getting Fianna Fáil to deliver the Greens’ targets in government, it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy). A third is whether the Programme for Government actually makes some Green concerns worse, not merely unchanged – Neasa Hourigan, for example, fears that the housing clauses will actually exacerbate the current shortages.

All of these are arguable points, on which there are no right or wrong answers. They are all subjective positions, where there are legitimate and debatable positions on either side. That’s part of why the Green Party has been tying itself in knots for the last week trying to figure out where it stands, and whether it should give the two-thirds backing needed to bring the new government over the line.

There is one other strand of argument which perhaps isn’t so easily accommodated, though. Much of the debate of the last few days has been to claim that the dilemma with which the Greens are now faced – ‘if you don’t take this deal, government happens without you’ – is contrived.

There is a belief in the party that maybe some better deal remains just off the table, and that another arm-wrestle could force Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil into handing more over – or, perhaps, that another format of government is still possible. Among the mooted options are a national government, where each of the five or six largest parties agree to share power, or perhaps Sinn Féin could lead an alternative government to honour the perceived spirit of the 2020 Election.

Those areas are not so grey; there are not equal merits to both sides of the argument. Firstly, take the prospect of a Sinn Féin-led government. How can Sinn Féin form a government? The same way anyone does: by getting enough support in the Dáil that they can win a vote on the appointment of a Taoiseach. There are 159 voting members of Dáil Éireann, so unless you can convince some other parties to abstain, you need 80 votes in your favour. We know Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil won’t play ball – and it’s not just a question of purging Micheál Martin; you can count on one hand the number of FF TDs who would contemplate a coalition with SF.

Moreover, if SF were to go down that route, they’d lose the five Solidarity-PBP TDs who will refuse to support a government involving either of the civil war parties.

When this Dáil first met, Mary Lou McDonald won 45 votes (37 Sinn Féin, plus five Solidarity-PBP and three independents). Throw in the Greens’ support and you’re still only at 57. Toss in the Social Democrats and Labour (who remain explicitly opposed to any sort of government at all) and you’re at 69. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s 72 votes will oppose, and you’re left looking for the support of another 11 independents, on top of the three you already have, simply to reach the magic number of 80. It’s barely tenable even in principle, let alone in practice, trying to build a coherent coalition around (at least) five parties and 14 independents.

And what of a better deal? Forget it. After five weeks of talks, and unsure of which leader they might be dealing with, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil won’t come back to the table. Fianna Fáil are happy to plough on ahead, trying to win the support of eight independents; Fine Gael have ruled that prospect out, but notwithstanding the difficulty of holding another election in the dying embers of a pandemic, they’ll fear nothing about a second election. Not with a government approval rating of 72%, Leo Varadkar’s rating at 75%, and Fine Gael polling in the mid-thirties while Fianna Fáil hover around 2011 levels.

Neasa Hourigan summarised last week that a FF-FG government might be the Greens’ only boat – but that the boat might also be the Titanic, and end in ruin for all. That might be true… but in truth the sea levels are rising, and there’s only one boat left to sail.