On the Brink of Government

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Ireland Calling with John Spain

On the Brink of Government

June 14, 2007

By John Spain

SO here we are two weeks after the election and two days before the Dail (Parliament) will reconvene on Thursday, and we still don’t know exactly who is going to make up the next government. What is virtually certain is that Fianna Fail will form the government and party leader Bertie Ahern will be taoiseach (prime minister) again. But we don’t know exactly who with.

As I write on Tuesday afternoon, last ditch talks are going on between Fianna Fail and the Green Party to do a deal. Fianna Fail’s aim is to give just enough concessions to the Greens to enable them to join in a new government.

The likely outcome is that they will be successful later this evening, allowing just enough time for the Greens to convene a delegate conference of their party in Dublin on Wednesday to approve the deal.

If that convention of Greens from around the country passes the deal that would mean that when the Dail reconvenes on Thursday the Greens would support Ahern and be rewarded with seats in the government.

It could all still come unstuck, of course. But at this stage that seems very unlikely, partly because the Greens are gagging to get into government.

Ahern is in the perfect position. He can form a new government without the Greens, by including the Progressive Democrats (PDs) and doing deals with a few independents. But that will give him only a wafer thin majority.

Ahern has been saying consistently since the votes were counted that his aim is to form a government that will be stable enough to last another five years. And to do that he really needs more than the bare majority — he needs a cushion of comfort, and for that he wants to include the Greens who have six seats.

Talks between Fianna Fail and the Greens (a three-man negotiating team on each side) went on all last week but ended on Friday without agreement. Instead of any rancor on either side there was a rueful recognition that, although a solid amount of agreement had been achieved, the policy differences that still divided them were too wide to bridge easily.

As usual in negotiations, the really difficult issues had been left until the end in the hope that the momentum of the talks would be sufficient to carry them through. But that did not happen.

Part of the reason for the failure was that the Greens must put any agreed program for government before a full conference of their party. Unless it includes a very significant level of Green policy the brown rice brethren may not buy it ... things like a carbon tax to tackle global warming, a spending switch from motorway building to public transport and so on.

The Green negotiating team did not feel they had got enough from Fianna Fail on issues like this to get a deal through a Green conference, so they walked away on Friday. Even so, there was ongoing contact between the two sides over the weekend, position papers on the sticking points were exchanged on Sunday and the negotiations resumed on Monday, including several hours of direct talks between Green leader Trevor Sergeant and Fianna Fail leader Ahern.

As I write now on Tuesday afternoon, the rumor in Dublin is that the final touches are being put to a program for government between the two main negotiators, Dan Boyle of the Green Party and Noel Dempsey of Fianna Fail. The lead role of Dempsey is interesting since he is minister for the environment in the outgoing government and has his hands on many of the issues that are important to the Greens.

As I said, all the indications are that a deal is about to be done. But one cannot be certain, and it is also uncertain whether a Green Party national convention on Wednesday will buy it.

My instinct is that enough of the Green rank and file know that it’s better to be inside the power structure doing things rather than outside endlessly whining. This is their big chance.

Not all the Greens are the sort of muesli-eating idealists who want us all to have a zero carbon footprint, to ride bikes, live on small holdings and grow our own vegetables. They are the ones who drive practical politicians mad.

Some of the Greens, however, live in the real world and recognize that change cannot move faster than public opinion. Plus they know that some green policies are on the way anyway, and if they are not in government to get the credit they could lose their relevance in the coming years.

This reality is also part of Ahern’s thinking, although from a different perspective. Global warming is now an issue that even President George W. Bush accepts must be tackled, and other world leaders share that view, something that was very clear at the recent G8 summit.

Ireland will have to play its part over the next five years, and Ahern knows that, so it makes sense to have the Greens on board the government to absorb some of the pain (and the blame!)

There is also a more pressing reason why Ireland needs to tackle the energy issue. Yes, we share the international concern about global warming and the need to reduce carbon emissions to tackle it. Part of that of course will be a reduction in oil use, something that will happen anyway because of increasing scarcity.

The fact is that Ireland is one of the most oil dependent countries in Europe, and since we are at the end of the pipeline, so to speak, our dependency makes us very vulnerable to the supply shortages and soaring prices that will inevitably come as the world passes the peak oil production point.

So we need to plan ahead with solar, wind and wave energy, and perhaps even nuclear power. Some energy economists here now think that the nuclear option is inevitable in Ireland, even though public opinion is still very much against it.

Wind and wave are lovely in theory but they are hugely intrusive, have environmental costs as well and fall far short of providing the vast amount of energy that today’s booming Ireland needs.

Dealing with this — energy conservation and the use of alternative sources — will require real sacrifice on the part of everyone in Ireland, not just today’s SUV-driving young Irish Celtic Tiger cubs.

It will be far easier to at least start the debate on all this if the Greens are in there in government. So it’s not just the comfort cushion of the six green votes that Ahern is after. He wants them also because they can share the load of what is coming down the tracks. It’s typical Ahern!

The problem for Fianna Fail is that they also have to keep the PDs happy, since they will also be part of the government. The sandal wearers in the Greens don’t like the PD low-tax, low-spend, pro-free enterprise philosophy.

But the fact is that Fianna Fail is now a party on the center-right rather than the center-left, having absorbed much of the PD philosophy over their 10 years in government together, so Fianna Fail itself won’t want to give too much ground on economic policy to the tree-huggers either.

The reality about all this is that last week while all eyes here were on the talks between Fianna Fail and the Greens, Ahern was quietly sewing up a deal with the PDs and a few independents. While the camera crews chased around after the Greens, the real action was elsewhere.

This means that the Greens are now facing a make your mind up moment that will be of historic importance to them. They’ve been around for over 25 years but they’ve never been in government.

This could be their only chance. The pressure on Green leader Trevor Sergeant to grasp the chance — and on his 800 or so delegates from around the country who will be called to a convention — must be huge.

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