The first thing that can be said is that it’s going to be controversial. When John Gormley made a forlorn effort to rush through his Climate Change Bill in the dying days of the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition, it had many ingredients similar to the UK legislation… binding targets for reducing emissions, an independent verification body with wide powers to keep the politicians honest, as well as responsibility for maintaining the targets being placed at the highest political level.

I have seen perhaps four private members Bills in the same time (the latest published only last Friday by independent TD Catherine Murphy) and all of them, without exception, contained binding targets.

Tomorrow’s Bill will contain no targets, other than the ones to which we are bound already… namely the EU imposed target that Ireland reduces its CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This target is already onerous as it only includes those sectors not covered by emissions trading: in other words transport, electricity and agriculture. It will have an aspirational target to make Ireland a carbon neutral country by 2050.

Part of the political thinking of the Minister (and presumably wider Government) is that the EU targets are already there and it might be better to pursue the goals with a field full of carrots rather than a bag full of sticks. The NESC report dwells on the ‘linear’ nature of all the target-focused initiatives and makes a number of stark observations that stands out for the reader. The first is those international initiatives have not worked and secondly, too much emphasis was placed on quantifying how much emissions needed to be reduced by without examining rigorously enough the qualitative ‘how to’ question – how to achieve those ends. The NESC solution to that is a complex one, containing goals that are not binding but should be ‘motivational’ the participation of all players from Government to business to community groups, especially the relevant State agencies, an an approach that balances the target of reducing admissions with finding ways and strategies for achieving those ends.

There is also criticism in the narrative of the ETS which it suggests has lacked impact with its political sponsors having been too optimistic in their views about how markets could act as corrective instruments for carbon use.

The report runs to over 90 pages and is well worth reading in its entirety. I suspect it’s going to divide opinion and attract very strong reactions. In its defence, it is very well researched, the arguments are very readable if cogently made, and clearly a lot of thinking went into it. I sense though that if the Bill lacks any target or coercive element that you will get the typical divide in society – conscientious groups, companies and individuals making change while others decline on the basis that existing wasteful practice and habits will go unpunished in their pockets.

Embedded in the text are some challenging passages. For one, NESC makes a strong (and in my view correct) argument that to present the ‘green economy’ as a seamless win-win is not accurate and that the outcomes can be quite uneven. It does stress, however, the need to go in that direction, even on the basis of contingent benefits.

The other is the candid admission that nobody has yet come up with the magic solution that will lead to a reduction in agriculture emissions, other than impractical nuclear options. A mixture of scientific advances as well as deep reform of local farming practices could bring us some of the way but there are still huge challenges that nobody yet knows how to surmount.

We’ll have coverage in The Irish Times on the draft legislation tomorrow, as well as
reaction and analysis.

After weeks of Government Ministers hyping up a solution on the promissory note repayments the European Central Bank comes out and says something unhelpful like ‘No’.

And then Irish Ministers come out with a mixture of threat (Gilmore) and reassurance (Rabbitte and Varadkar). The question is will it get them anywhere this time?

There are two separate ways of getting relief (or sustainabilitity to use the buzz word) on Ireland’s debt relief: either by getting a deal on the promissory note, or getting some payback for the €64 billion Irish governments have pumped into the performing banks. You always know that talks are failing on one of those solutions when the Government starts talking up the other solution.

How many times since August of 2011 has this newspaper reported that the Government was on the brink of a breakthrough or a deal on debt relief, only for everything to evaporate?

This time it’s a little different. There’s a looming deadline on March 31 for the next repayment of €3.1bn. What would be almsost as bad for the Government as no deal would be some kind of three-card-trick on the €3.1bn that would alter the form of repayment but still leave the Government on the hook for it within a relatively short time period.

And in any instance, the three bodies in the Troika arrive in Dublin today to begin the latest quarterly reviews. Ironically one of their concerns is that the Government has become obsessed with the debt question to the detriment of all the tough fiscal decisions that remain to be taken.

There are two narratives on Ireland’s performance under the bailout programme. There is the one given by Micheal Noonan and Brendan Howlin at the end of each quarterly review. Invariably, both hand out gold stars to themselves for being the best students in class.

Then there is the less gilded narrative of IMF and EU Commission staff. It’s slightly harder to decipher, because it’s heavy on jargon and nuanced. But it’s clear that its message is: not paying enough attention in class and must try harder.

As officials arrive today to begin the ninth review of the programme, it is clear the gap between the Government and the Troika on the expectations for recovery have widened measurably despite the continued success in meeting the programme targets.

Analysis based on the latest staff reports from the Commission and the IMF, as well as from well-placed sources, shows there is real concern that radical Government reforms have slowed down and may even hit the buffers.

The first criticism is the Government has portrayed a deal on bank debt and promissory note as some kind of panacea when it’s not. Then there is the recurrent theme that the public sector pay bill has not been tackled sufficiently; that not enough has been done to tackle the growing problem of long-term unemployed people; and measures to address over-runs, especially in health, have been inadequate.

The net outcome of that is the Government will not be in a position to hit the magical 3 per cent of national debt target by 2015 if it continues to pursue current policies. Its own figures are €1.2 billion more optimistic than that of the Troika.
In its staff paper, the Commission drily notes that the current plans “may not be sufficient to reach the (3 per cent) deficit target”.

“We express doubt that Ireland will get to under 3 per cent before 2015 with the triple lock (the Croke Park agreement protecting pay; no cuts in basic social welfare; no increases in income taxes)”.

“That is why Croke Park Two has to be more ambitious…

“The political point is it’s very hard to say to other countries you should help Ireland if there is evidence that Ireland is not doing enough,” said one source who spoke on condition of not being identified.”

While acknowledging programme implementation, the Troika has a sense that the huge emphasis placed on debt sustainability has meant that, as one source puts it “the reform momentum may have slowed a little”.

A deal on debt sustainability is not the solution to all Ireland’s problems, says the source. The separate fiscal crisis, with the collapse of 30 per cent in tax earnings, posed a huge challenge to public finances. Massive permanent increases in spending were financed by transitory tax revenues.

“Even if your fairy godmother arrives and in one stroke all the bank debt is gone, there is still a huge amount of austerity to got through [on the fiscal side],” the source said.

That said, the IMF and Commission staff reports underlined the importance of a deal on bank debt pointing out that otherwise the fall in spreads on Irish debt could be reversed. Both reports suggest that expectations were raised too quickly after the June 2012 summit that a deal could be struck.

Perhaps that sentiment has been borne out this weekend as Government ministers have tried to ‘spin’ bad news from ECB sources. It happened last autumn too when Enda Kenny had to place a personal phone call to Angela Merkel to get her to contextualise comments she made that there would be no retrospection (ie money paid back to Ireland for propping up its banks) when the new European Stablity Mechanism came into being.

Troika staff have focused to an inordinate extent on the public sector pay bill in recent months. The core argument is that cutting numbers isn’t enough.

The Commission noted that Irish medical consultants were the highest paid in the EU for their public work, being paid twice the rate in the UK. The IMF noted: “Public pay is elevated in Ireland especially for teachers and medical professionals.”
It has honed in on medical consultants in particular. One example is of the consultant who described a proposed public salary (€205,000) as ‘Mickey Mouse money’ [six years ago].

“Some of these guys don’t realise the party is over,” said the source.

Other unpublished figures showed that Ireland had the largest increase in public wage bill between numbers and wages since 2000 but that public sector pay cuts since then have been markedly smaller than other programme countries such as Portugal and Spain .

Its net argument: the Irish public service has suffered less than other programme countries. It accepts that it has brought industrial peace but asks is Ireland paying too high a price for it?

Troika officials are also cool on universal payments and make the point that they end up going to too many people who don’t need them. The health over-runs, the Commission suggests, reflects the lack of binding targets for departmental spending ceilings. An “escape clause” may be evoked.
They are also worried about the lack of detail of how the Government will achieve further cuts in 2014 and 2015.

They want the Coalition it lay its cards on the table now – the IMF suggests reforming tax relief on private pensions; greater use of generic drugs and (controversially) an “affordable loan scheme” for third level students.

Other criticisms: the slow pace of progress of Irish Water; the scrapping of rent supplement to be replaced by a payment based on level of income rather than employment status. This is designed to incentivise (with a stick rather than a carrot) people to look for employment. With its continuous pressure on the Coalition to improve job activation measures, the Commission has recommended private sector involvement in activation programmes.
The supposed irreconcilable nature of Ireland’s approach is summed up by an official: “Ireland wants Sweden’s welfare State and an American tax rate.

In less than two years the Government has announced three separate job plans. One has promised 100,000 extra jobs by 2016; the other two each claimed 13,000 new jobs in the economy, a total of 26,000.
It’s when you begin to drill down that you encounter the cliché of ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’. On the employment front, the Government will point to ‘wins’ in tourism, where 6,000 new jobs have been created. There are also the recent Enterprise Ireland and Industrial Development Agency annual figures which collectively show a net gain of more 10,000 new jobs 2012. But then when you turn to the CSO’s National Household Quarterly Survey you see that there was a marginal (0.2 per cent) decrease in the number of people employed at the end of quarter 3 in 2012: falling 4,300 to 1.841 million.
So as the Cabinet meets today to discuss its Jobs Action Plan for 2013, it is against background of being actually further away from achieving its goal of creating 100,000 extra jobs in the Irish economy by 2016 than it was before it started its major plan in 2012.
The Minister for Jobs and Enterprise Richard Bruton has characterised the economy as “one in transition”. He has argued that the Government has been successful in targeting growth in the high-potential sectors where sustainable jobs will be created in future. They include exports; the green economy; the International Financial Services Sector; information and communications technology; cloud computing; food; health and life sciences; pharmaceuticals and medical manufacturing.
Against the good news in certain sectors and pockets of the economy, there is the continuing ‘drag’ on employment in sectors that continue to ‘correct’ as a result of the recession – namely the obvious one of construction; as well as the domestic financial sector and the public sector (the latter which has shed 16,000 jobs since 2011 in central Government and State agencies).
Even before forming a Government, both Coalition parties had made promises of a ‘jobs budget’ within the first 100 days. What materialised in May of 2011 was a slightly lesser animal – a jobs initiative.
The plan, unveiled by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, was still ambitious, with a budget of €2 billion over four years, funded (controversially) from a raid on private pension funds. In return, Noonan introduced a number of stimuli specifically geared towards tourism. It included a lowering of VAT to 9 per cent targeted at food, hotel, holiday, entertainment and sporting facilities. Air travel tax was also to be reduced if airline companies could show how they would increase passenger numbers. However, the Minister and the airline industry didn’t see eye-to-eye on this and it remained at €2 per head. There was also a reduction of employer PRSI to encourage job creation. The internship scheme, jobsbridge.ie, was also unveiled.
So what bang did the taxpayers get for their buck? The most comprehensive analysis is contained in an appendix to the Medium Term Fiscal Statement in November, which examined the VAT reductions in the tourism sector, which cost €150m per annum.
The study showed there was a “pass through” in prices in this sector, in that they fell marginally once VAT was reduced. It showed the number of jobs in the sector increased by 6,200 but could not say whether all were attributable to this change.
The second specific initiative was the jobs stimulus plan announced by Howlin in July 2012. That committed €2.25 billion to specified capital projects comprising roads, schools and primary health centres, including those in Minister for Health James Reilly’s constituency. It has also claimed that up to 13,000 jobs will be created by a plan which is still in its very early stages.
The third big initiative was the Jobs Action Plan for 2012 announced last January. It set out 270 distinct actions across all 15 Government departments and State agencies. They ranged from major (advanced broadband targets, a national waste strategy, the Credit Guarantee Bill; cloud computing; a microfinance fund) to minor (“leverage the potential for language and roots tourism”) and also included actions that would have happened anywhere. While it was clear from some of actions completed that there was an element of box-ticking, the argument made by Mr Bruton its specific targeted nature would address what commentator Eddie Molloy described as the ‘implementation deficit disorder’.
Still, arguably the Government should have concentrated on what was important and vital rather than throwing everything into the strategy. Some of the 270 actions consisted of getting complicated legislation through while others consisted of nothing more than holding a meeting and agreeing that, yes, this issue was important. Fianna Fail’s record on job creation was dire towards the end of its time in government. Still, there was some merit to Dara Calleary’s argument today that a lot of the actions were vague, and that for some of the, getting them completed seemed meaningless.
An extra 100,000 jobs was promised: 20,000 in manufacturing; 30,000in international traded services; with another 50,000 spin-off jobs. There’s still four full years to go and it is a long-term strategy but its goals are still a long way off.

PANEL

Jobs Initiative May 2011: Cost €2bn. Goal 13,000 plus jobs
Jobs Action Plan, Jan 2012: Cost: n/a. Goal 100,000 jobs by 2016
Infrastructure Stimulus Plan, July 2012: Cost €2.25bn. Goal 13,000 jobs

Jobs statistics
Number of people employed September 2012: 1.841m (down 4,300)
Number who have gone through jobsbridge.ie (to end of 2012): 12,000
Net increase in Jobs in tourism sector (byQ3 2012): 6,200
Net increase in jobs under aegis of IDA 2012: 6,000
Net increase in jobs under aegis of EI in 2012: 3,800

It always happens. Government guillotines debate on legislation in the Dáil and Seanad. Opposition complains bitterly. Says it will bring in reform. Opposition becomes Government and sets about imposing guillotines on debate in legislation in Dáil and Seanad.

Ditto with legislative programmes. The opposition constantly criticised the fact that so few of the promised Bills each term actually got published. Now the opposition is in Government and it’s going through the same process.

Ditto Dáil reform. The opposition mocked adjournment debates because they were too late at night and the relevant Minister never showed up but farmed it off to colleagues. Now it’s called topical issues and even though it’s on earlier that day, it’s not a huge improvement on what went before. Certain ministers are seldom there to answer questions relating to their brief.

Like everything else in Ireland – a small country, a settled democracy, a very oligarchical form of governing, innate conservatism, resistance to change – when they happen occur, changes happen incrementally, a little like the way the days gradually get brighter as the year progresses.

That’s why the claim by the incoming Government that it had affected a “democratic revolution” was such an assault on the English language. That said, there are a number of important and substantial issues that will dominate this Dáil term.

The most obvious one is abortion. From a legislative point of view, it’s going to be relatively quiet for a month or so, as the Department of Health prepares draft legislation.

But that wont’ prevent the intensification or the continuance of the debate and the divisions in the public sphere. The pro-life rally on Saturday will serve as another reminder that this tangled and problematic issue will be a dominant issue in the political year.

But it seems certain that the legislation and guidelines – including a threat of self-destruction as grounds for lawful abortion – will pass, given the whips being imposed and the huge majority of the Government.

Even without a whip, the middle ground of Fine Gael will support the Bill. Many who had been veering against the Bill were convinced enough by the medics last week to veer the other way.

There will be an issue with a minority of Fine Gael TDs who can see no alternative but to vote against the law on grounds of moral conscience. Politically, the most salient aspect will be their number and how the Fine Gael party deals with them from a disciplinary perspective.

Elsewhere, the promissory note issue will feature prominently in political discourse between now and Easter. There’s a looming deadline waiting at the end of March. Last year, the Government did a bit of a three card trick and ‘magicked’ away the €3 billion due for a year.

But anything less than a permanent deal to make the €30bn burden (originally to be paid over a shockingly short ten years) sustainable will cause a huge amount of bother for both Coalition parties.

That is particularly so given the overweening confidence which Ministers have displayed in telling all and sundry that a deal is in the big/imminent/ there for the taking.

We’ll believe it when we see it. There have been too many false dawns on debt deals with the ECB and others in the short lifetime of the Government. If they pull it off, they will be heroes. If they don’t, they will be hammered. It’s a simple as that.

A little later in the year, the introduction of the property tax will be the pencilled-in event that should dominate the middle of the year. It’s a big new tax and will rake in €300m in a full year adding hundreds to the annual household tax bill.

I’m not sure if it’s by happenstance or design but the fact that it is being staggered in will make it seem a little palatable. Householders will pay for six months this year and it will not be until 2014 that the full weight of it will have to be borne.

The Government’s calculation is that by that stage it will have bedded itself in and people may grumble about it but will generally accept it. I’m not so sure about that. It’s going to be very unpopular, in July this year, in January next year too.

The other question is: will there be a campaign of disobedience this year and will it have the success of last year’s campaign? Yes, for sure, but I suspect it will not have the traction of last year.

For one, Revenue is in charge and having studied the mistakes from last year will not repeat them. Also, there won’t be any messing around with those who don’t comply.

It’s interesting that Sinn Féin today said very firmly that it will confine its opposition to the Bill to parliamentary protest, including drafting its own bills. The fact that the party won’t take to the street, to me, looks like another of those small and deliberative steps towards the mainstream.

Sure, it didn’t officially protest on the streets last year. But like everybody else in Irish politics, incremental change is the name of the game for Sinn Féin.

The tragic death of Shane McEntee has cast a shadow over the entire political system. When news filtered through to Leinster House of his sudden death, it was shocking. And then when details emerged that he had taken his own life, it was awful beyond words.

There is no set profile of people who commit suicide and the reasons are often very complicated, impossible to discern. On the face of it, Shane McEntee seemed so unlikely. He was an innately decent man who wore his emotions on his sleeve. Generally, he was seen as very solid although prone to sometimes saying things without first thinking them through.

It is known that he was very upset about the reaction to comments he made after the Budget. In an intervew with The Sunday Times, he excused the cut of €400 respite care grant on the basis that you could get a room for a week in a top hotel for €700. What he was trying to say that with prices falling in society as a result of the recession, the fall was relative as people could get more bang for their buck these days. But it sounded bad and he received a barrage of criticism for it on the radio, on the phone and through social media.

There has been a lot of commentary since the weekend that all of this was a factor in his decision to end his life. To be quite honest, it’s not possible to tell or reach any kind of conclusion on this, as we just don’t know the full facts or circumstances surrounding the tragedy. But one of the repercussions has been a renewed scrutiny of the role that social media and more traditional forms (radio shows and even the humble telephone) have played in recent political discourse.

I spoke to quite a number of politicians from all hues over the weekend and they were all at one on a number of points. The first was that the volume has been pumped up when it came to vitriol and vile comments since the recessions has started.

It’s not hard to see why. People have lost jobs and are struggling with debt and are worried about making ends meet and are angry. But the anger becomes personalised and sometimes manifests itself in nasty abuse of the politician involved.

Liam Twomey, a Fine Gael TD from Wexford, is also a family doctor. He made the observation at the weekend that the anger has almost become self-perpetuating. Among the angry people, he said, you sometimes find people who have very well paid public jobs and whose mortgages have been full paid. He said it they really looked at their own situation compared to others they would find that the anger is misplaced and that they have assumed a common position (anger) without examining why it should be.

The second has been the growth of social media and the huge popularity of facebook and twitter. Many politicians (most younger) have gone onto the platform. But every time they or their party have been invovled in a controversy, they have encountered a blizzard of abuse. That in itself is a problem but the worst part of it is that some of is comes from those who use a pseudonym, which allows them hurl abuse under the cloak of anonymity. This has become a real problem on twitter and facebook. The Cork South Central TD Jerry Buttimer was subjected to horrible abuse on facebook after the Budget, some of it bordering closely on incitement to hatred. The Roscommon TD Frankie Feighan got similar treatment over Roscommon hospital. When the Minister of State at the Department of Communications Sean Sherlock introduced regulations that would have implications for online copywright, he encountered a huge campaign opposing it from the the tecchie and web community. Which was fair enough, except that a small proportion started personalising the abuse in a horrible way.

Politicians are sentient – and sometimes sensitive – human beings and are prone to the same fears, anxieties and shock as anybody else is. And there are idiots out there who hide behind the cloak of anonymity and think that politicians  are fair game for all kinds of abuse and lies and insults and hate they can conjure up. Obviously they aren’t innured. I spoke to half a dozen TDs over the past few days who were deeply hurt and upset by the stuff they had to deal with. The Minister of State who has responsibility for mental health Kathleen Lynch pointed out to me over the weekend that you should never assume that politicians, because they are public figures and more used to being at the eye of the storm, are resilient to the kind of personal abuse that has become common since the recession and the advent of social media.

It must also be added that it’s just not an online phenomenon. Anger and venom has become the currency of some radio talk shows. And there are also anonymous telephone calls. It’s just a sad fact that modern society provides far more opportunities for those who want to use the poison pen. There is a small unrepresenative section, and I’d say some are frothing angry teenagers, who think that all  politicians are fair game. Lynch told me that she never looks at facebook or Twitter because of that kind of carry-on. She also said that she is seriousnly considering bringing in people with expertise who can advise and counsel politicians on how to deal, both practically and psychologically, with such hate campaigns when they arise. Her point is also directed against those who sent such bile. She said they sometimes don’t realise that the message they have fired off in anger or in fury has consequences, that it can incite other anonymous ‘trolls’ to add their tuppence worth, that it can be very upsetting to those who receive it… forcing them to the point of despair. Of course, the vast majority of those who use Twitter, facebook and online fora are responsbile in their online behaviour, but a small group of anonymous nasties can infect the whole site. I was involved in a very interesting conversation on Twitter on Sunday night on anonymity. As journalists, we rely on anonymous sources and some of the most important whistleblowers in Ireland and abroad have retained their anonymity. One of the best sites on Irish current affairs, namawinelake, is written by an anonymous pen. So for me, allowing people to retain their anonymity when talking on matters of public interest is important. It’s when it gets nasty that it creates problems. Telling a politician you hope he dies slowly from cancer is unspeakable and cowardly. And there have been a few instances of anonymous nastiness that has been uncovered recently. The former Fianna Fáil TD Chris Andrews was exposed as having set up a false Twitter identity to allow him criticise rivals within the party with (seeming) impunity. Another Irish blogger revealed how he had been subjected to anti-semitic abuse for over a year. When he investigated the source, he found out it was the teenage son of a good friend of his. One of the lazy responses from people is that, well, the internet is so big and extensive that it can’t be policed. Well yes it can. You can’t stop it all but when you are talking about Irish politics and current affairs, some sites are more popular than others. Stronger moderation and enforcement of the basic ground rules, for one, would help. And if somebody is useing a facebook or a Twitter account to hurl horrible anonymous abuse, that involves racism or sexism or incitement to hatred, both companises should be pressurised to make sure that that account is closed down. If there was a newspaper doing the same, it would be shut down within a week. Shane McEntee bocht. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Fianna Fail was in power so long that you tend to think that defection is an unusual phenomenon for either Fine Gael or Labour, and that is was just the soldiers of destiny who experience their peopel going overboard.

But one starts doing a non-exhaustive glace back, you see that both parties have had their fair share of expulsion and defections. A general rule of thumb is the more turbulent the period the more likely a conflict. Secondly, you can never account for mavericks. Thirdly, there have been a small group of politicians who have been involved in behaviour that has made their membership of [parliamentary] parties untenenable.

We’ll start off with Fianna Fail which is freshest in the memory. There’s a long list there of expulsioins and defections, both voluntary and compulsory. In the last Dail, the party Mattie McGrath and the former Wicklow TD Joe Behan vote voted against the Government and essentially became independents after that. Ned O’Keeffe had his problems with the party leadership, and was in and out of the parliamentary party, because of disputes over policies. Jim McDaid had a semi-detached, if even that, attitude to the party had also deserted before the Fianna Fail-Green coalition implled. Then there was Beverly Flynn, who was expelled and then brought back in by Bertie Ahern in 2007. Before that Ray Burke resigned before he could be flunt out. In a sense Martin Cullen also defected. He did have health problems but his sudden departure from both the party and the Dail in the middle of the political crisis put Brian Cowen’s government under extraordinary pressure.

Most famously, Charles Haughey, Kevin Boland and Neil Blaney were all expelled from the parliamentary party during the Arms Crisis. When Haughey himself was leader, there was a revolving door of expulsions and defections. The most serious occurrence – by a country miles – was when Des O’Malley, Mary Harney, Pearse Wyse, and Bobby Molloy all defected to form the PDs.

It is worth pointing out the paradox that the smaller party in Government – despite some very shaky moments – stayed relatively cohesive. Senator Deirdre de Búrca left after the party’s diastrous performance in the 2009 European elections. But that was the only departure. The rest all stayed on to sink together.

Fine Gael and Labour have also had their moments but until now, neither has come near Fianna Fail in terms of scale or drama. Fine Gael has lost one TD in the current Dail. That’s Denis Naughten who left the party over its failure to fulfil pre-election promises in relation to Roscommon Hospital.

In the last Dail there was a spectacular defection when former RTE economics editor George Lee resigned from Fine Gael and from the Dail less than a year after winning the Dublin South byelection by a landslide. That proved the catalyst for a heave against Enda Kenny later that year.

Michael Lowry parted company with the party in 1996 after revelations came to light about his relationship with Ben Dunne, and separately, with Denis O’Brien.

In 1982, Fine Gael plucked a local self-made businessman Liam Skelly, with scant connection to the party, as its candidate in the Dublin West byelection. Against expectations, Skelly narrowly won the seat but thereafter was a thorn in the side of then leader Garret Fitzgerald. He had resigned the whip by the time the general election was called in 1987. He stood as an independent but won only a little over per cent of the vote.

For Labour, its most notable moment was in 1989 when Dick Spring and the party leadership expelled the militant membership of the party in its entirety. The disaffected included Joe Higgins and Clare Daly who subsequently went on to form the Socialist Party. Since then there have been some temporary expulsions – Tommy Broughan has been down that road before – but nothing like the uncomfortable position the party is in at present.

It has lost five of its TDs and there is a sense that the party has lost direction and is flailing around in the dark. No matter how it tries to sell the Budget, its campaign to get a higher rate of USC for very high earners will be seen as a blunder.

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