Fudge replaces Irish Water as FF and FG finally start to take each other seriously

The emerging deal between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on the future of Irish Water and of water charges comes after days of stalemate and an inconclusive meeting yesterday between acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin.

After failure to agree a deal in recent days, the negotiating teams kicked the water issue “upstairs” to the two leaders.

When the two men couldn’t reach a conclusion yesterday morning, it was clear to all concerned that the failure of the entire talks process was now in prospect.

That increased the likelihood of another general election, and concentrated minds sufficiently to achieve the outlines of a compromise yesterday afternoon.

Like all such deals, it appears to be a slightly messy fudge that enables each side to claim with some justification that they have got enough to save face, enough to take home to their parliamentary parties and their voters.

Confusion

Irish Water will be no more. That will please Fianna Fáil, as will the fact that most people will not pay water charges, albeit there was some confusion over this point last night .

But a national authority will remain, as will the principle of a broad contribution from consumers for water. That should be enough for Fine Gael.

Why was the deal so difficult to do?

Some sources have put this down to the difficult chemistry between the two leaders. But it has more got to do with the difficult chemistry between the two parties.

There is a high degree of mutual incomprehension between the two sides. Fianna Fáil could not believe that Fine Gael would risk a general election to defend Irish Water, an unpopular company that is badly implementing detested charges. It feared that a public climbdown on Irish Water would be hung around its neck like the "Tesco" ads in the 2011 general election would haunt Labour.

Fine Gael, for its part, believed that Fianna Fáil could not be serious about digging in on Irish Water. And it assumed that when Fianna Fáil realised that Fine Gael was committed to the principle of charging for water – a principle which, in the long term, Fianna Fáil subscribes to – it would back down.

Privately, Fine Gael people rail at Fianna Fáil’s brass neck. Here we are, they say, cleaning up the mess that Fianna Fáil left behind it – again! – and they have the effrontery to tell us how we can and can’t do it.

Arrogance

Typical Fine Gael arrogance, reckons Fianna Fáil. They just can’t accept the result of the general election. They think they’re still in charge. Well, they’re not.

On the Fine Gael side, these ideas spring from the party’s self-image as the people who do the right thing, who put the country first, no matter what the political cost. Unlike you- know-who.

On Fianna Fáil’s side, the party is determined to demonstrate that that under Micheál Martin they mean what they say to voters. On coalition. And on Irish Water.

But politics is about compromise. The trouble here was that compromise takes some degree of mutual understanding. That was slow in coming.

Both parties have proved themselves pretty flexible on policy matters in the past, to put it mildly. But the gap between the two parties is not just on policy; it is also about history and culture, and about the way they see themselves. If anything, that has proved harder to bridge.

What happened yesterday was that both parties realised that the other was serious. That it should have taken so long for the realisation to dawn on each suggests that if the minority government does indeed take shape in the days ahead it will be a rocky road for the two parties.