|
|
|
|
|
No holiday from problems
14 March 2010 By Pat Leahy, Political Editor
As the Dáil breaks for the St Patrick’s Day recess, and the government embarks on the annual exodus, ministers will be heading for the departure lounges with more relief than usual.
In truth, much official travel is tedious and tiring. Of course, some parts are nice - the posh hotels and the five-star treatment help compensate for the long flights and endless receptions with the local Irish communities, and the hours of small talk at the usual diplomatic shindigs. Ministers wouldn’t be human if they didn’t find a motorcade gratifying.
But this year, ministers will welcome the trips simply as a break from what is beginning to look increasingly like the slow-motion disintegration of the government.
The government has been severely undermined in recent weeks; the pervasive sense of relative calm and medium-term security which pervaded after Christmas - with the budget in the rear-view mirror - has vanished. The loss of three ministers severely damaged the government, if not in the opinion polls, then certainly its internal equilibrium.
The actions of former defence minister Willie O’Dea and the nature of the departure of Green Party junior minister Trevor Sargent were corrosive to the trust between the two coalition parties.
The Greens are still in the midst of internal convulsion, the severity of which should not be underestimated.
The departure from the Dáil last week of Martin Cullen due to illness has further endangered the government’s majority.
With the politically toxic banking recapitalisations, the transfers of loans to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), and a long drawn-out cabinet reshuffle in a fortnight, there will be no respite for ministers once they return from overseas. The contracting Dáil numbers now pose a growing threat to Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s administration.
A government can survive all sorts of shocks and unpopularity - especially if its TDs know that there’s a good chance they’ll lose their seats if they cause an election.
But if it doesn’t have the votes on the floor of the Dáil any more, then it is game over.
Cowen now faces the prospect of three by-elections, all of which Fianna Fáil will probably lose. Two other members of his parliamentary party, finance minister Brian Lenihan and TD Michael Fitzpatrick, are being treated for serious illnesses. Three TDs have formally lost the party whip, although they continue to vote habitually with the government.
Look at the numbers this way: Cowen can muster 84 votes in the Dáil. This includes 71 Fianna Fáil TDs, the three Fianna Fáil lost sheep (Jimmy Devins, Eamonn Scanlan, Jim McDaid), six Greens, two ex-PDs and two independents, Jackie Healy-Rae and Michael Lowry.
The combined opposition has 78 votes. If and when it wins the three by-elections, it will have 81 votes. After that, if just two more votes switch, the government will fall. Cowen’s majority used to be 13. If he loses the by-elections, it will be three.
Those betting on the government’s medium-term future must also consider the effect of losing three by-elections on Cowen’s leadership. What would it do to the sang-froid of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers?
Most of them have already lost faith in Cowen’s leadership. They know that many of them are unlikely to hold their seats after the next election anyway.
The forthcoming cabinet reshuffle, like all reshuffles, will leave some people disappointed and disillusioned.
Once a possibility to proactively reinvent and relaunch his government, the reshuffle now looks like a belated response to a series of forced resignations. It is, in other words, another opportunity lost. That has been the story of Cowen’s time as Taoiseach so far.
TDs, ministers, advisers, prominent Fianna Fáilers - they are all throwing their eyes up to heaven about the on-again, off-again, now you see-it, now-you-don’t reshuffle. Many believe the opportunity for generating any sort of political restart from the reshuffle is gone.
Cowen’s record does not suggest that the reshuffle will be the sort of remaking of the government that might change the game. He has also allowed himself to be boxed into a corner regarding his Tánaiste.
As one old political hand noted last week, the reshuffle will be judged, in large part, by what he does with Mary Coughlan and her enterprise ministry.
Coughlan slaves on behalf of Cowen, in the government, in the party, in the organisation. But she is not at home with much of her brief and too many of the key stakeholders in the area regard her as a liability. After caustic comments about her by the chief executive of the technology company Norkom on RTE’s Frontline last week, it was noticeable that nobody of a similar stature offered an endorsement of Coughlan’s work. Some of the criticism of her is unfair, but not all.
Whatever Cowen does with Coughlan and her Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment - and he has not decided yet - he faces other difficult choices in the reshuffle, too. Most of them have been made more difficult by the long wait.
The Taoiseach must also keep the Green Party happy. According to people with some knowledge of the discussions between Cowen and Green leader John Gormley, the Greens are telling the Taoiseach they must have a second junior ministry.
Giving it to them will enrage Cowen’s party; not giving it to them risks exacerbating the already uneasy climate within the Greens. The Greens are having an enormous wobble, and the personal relationships that bound them together politically are under unprecedented strain. In this regard, the bitter defection from the party of Déirdre de Búrca has proved to be very destabilising for a group that was as much a family as a political party.
If you examine the data, the Greens’ poll numbers are actually okay. But their nerves are shot. Gormley’s testiness when confronted by reporters last week - he barked at them that their speculation about the Greens was becoming boring, before flouncing off - didn’t do anything to calm the party’s nerves.
Just as it is for Fianna Fáil, the reshuffle looks like a problem, rather than a solution, for the Greens.
|
|
|
