Bruton tries to lower rising temperature of election fever

LEINSTER House has blurred into activity as Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats trawl for issues designed to embarrass the Government, and Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Democratic Left try desperately to pacify a succession of pressure groups.

It is a time of change; the turning of the political wheel between one government and the next. And special-interest groups are queuing up with their demands; determined to extract concessions before the shutters are brought down by a new administration.

There are two distinct groups at work here: public service workers are seeking pay increases under threat of industrial or social disruption, and disparate interests in the broader community are seeking grants, subsidies tax changes and a range of other concessions.

A belief that the Government is there for the plucking has been fostered by a number of recent developments. In preparing for the pre-summer general election, the Rainbow parties negotiated a three-year social consensus deal, involving pay, taxation and job-creation projects, called Partnership 2000. And, in its anxiety for industrial peace, it agreed public pay increases which Ruairi Quinn had said were excessive.

The next hurdle was the threatened nurses' strike. Faced by militant workers, with the force of public opinion, the media and the opposition parties behind them, the Government raised its pay offer from £25 million to £50 million and finally to £80 million. A Review Body was also provided.

The Government attempted to ring-fence that settlement, but already social workers, various therapists, medical workers and others are seeking to re-establish old relativities.

Provincial ambulance drivers are threatening strike action; the prison officers are in dispute over the growing number of offenders they have to mind; and members of the Garda Siochana are increasingly militant.

This last category of workers is the only one with sufficient social muscle to seriously disturb the Government. They reject the terms of Partnership 2000 and are demanding that a review of their pay scales begin before next May, under threat of some kind of work-to-rule.

UNLIKE the nurses, other paramedical groups do not have overwhelming public sympathy on their side.

More significantly, they don't have the power to shut down the medical system.

There are dangers, as well as opportunities, in the present situation. The Government is under pressure to ensure industrial peace going into the election. But it is also under pressure to protect the terms of Partnership 2000 and to underpin the authority of those trade union leaders who negotiated it. If militant workers are allowed to set the agenda, then the Partnership deal could implode.

Rather than see that happen, the Government is likely to confront a relatively weak group of workers and teach them a lesson.

Other special interest groups will probably be dealt with on an ad-hoc basis. Most organisations realise that election promises extracted under pressure have little validity. In the recent past, various opposition parties promised - and failed - to abolish ground rents, residential property tax and water charges and to legalise television deflect or systems, on being elected to government. Timing and muscle is everything.

The Government - and Fine Gael in particular - is painfully aware of agitation in rural constituencies following the campaign over group water schemes by farmers and growing pressure for the licensing of TV deflectors.

Brendan Howlin is likely to bring a package of subsidies for group water schemes to the Cabinet within the next few weeks. And Alan Dukes has spoken of the need for "very detailed consideration" of the politically-sensitive deflector issue.

Other issues, such as the ICMSA's proposal for a special farm subsidy where members of the public cross private land, and the Revenue Commissioners' efforts to apply VAT to creches and play-schools, will probably be put on hold until the autumn.

Last Wednesday John Bruton told members of his parliamentary party to "cool it". There was no point in feeding election fever by unauthorised promises and by chasing, votes on every contentious issue.

The Taoiseach's strictures might go some way towards defusing the situation. But election fever is rife at Leinster House, and the political temperature is more likely to rise than to fall.