Amateur approach to finding consensus

Although the prospect for all-party agreement has all but disappeared, the Greens believe they were right to take the initiative

THE “CONSENSUS” initiative is almost unprecedented in modern Irish politics and you have to go back to “the Emergency” years of the second World War to find an historical parallel.

However, given the uniqueness and potential importance of the initiative, there was a surprisingly casual and almost amateur aspect to the manner in which it was approached.

The consensus idea had been discussed at meetings of the Green parliamentary party but as one senior Green political figure admitted: “It wasn’t pretty the way it came out in the end.”

Rushing from one engagement to the next, party leader John Gormley gave an interview to Today FM where, in the words of a party colleague, he “blurted it out” and managed to complicate the issue by repeated references to a national government.

But the idea of all-party agreement was out in the open and as the day went on the Green leader refined his approach, commenting that, although it was too soon to call for a national government, there was a strong need for the parties to pull together and this would impress the European Commission and the global money markets.

Although Gormley texted the Taoiseach’s inevitably busy mobile phone number in advance of “going public” and may even have tried to put through a call, Brian Cowen had no advance knowledge of the Green leader’s impending announcement.

When he spoke to the media the day after Gormley’s intervention, Cowen’s tone was rather low-key, perhaps reflecting a certain annoyance at his colleague from the Green Party, but the content of what he said was positive. He said he would have “no problem in principle” with meeting Opposition leaders.

Although the prospects for all-party agreement have all but disappeared, the Greens are convinced they were right to take the initiative because it put the focus firmly on the economy and the Opposition’s responsibilities at a time of national crisis.