How best laid plains for FG-FF pact went up in smoke

The room is nondescript, used for meetings and as a waiting room. It is located just at the end of the "bridge" that connects Leinster House to Government Buildings. The number 716 is written on a small plate on the door.

Late on Thursday afternoon, acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his Fianna Fáil counterpart Micheál Martin met in this inauspicious room. It was less than 24 hours since they had held their last meeting. That had happened on Wednesday night and had been the first contact between both leaders since the general election over a month beforehand.

The previous night had gone surprisingly well. The meeting had lasted well more than an hour and Kenny had left the meeting buoyed with optimism and bearing hope of some brave new era in Irish politics. In precis, he gave to believe Fianna Fáil would buy into the grand plan for a “partnership government”.

Mutual suspicion

Overnight, a northeasterly otherwise known as political reality had blown up. By the time a four-hour Fianna Fáil meeting had concluded on Thursday morning, the chilliness was registering on the Beaufort scale.

Very quickly, the mood between both men descended from forced civility into bickering and mutual suspicion. While both are approachable and civil with just about everybody else, they rub each other up the wrong way.

Martin outlined the reasons Fianna Fáil had rejected the offer. Kenny told him brusquely he had been taken aback, and reminded Martin of what Fianna Fáil should be trying to do.

“There were a few sparks, then it went party political,” said a source who was briefed on the meeting.

“Kenny was questioning the rejection, Martin was questioning the integrity of Fine Gael’s approach and saying essentially they did not mean what they said.”

The meeting came 40 days after the election, and followed weeks of stalemate and tedious progress, including 70 tortuous hours of negotiation. It lasted all of 18 minutes.

The sparks at the meeting did not end there. The row burned all afternoon with a string of accusations and counter-accusations, flinty language and a ratcheting-up of rhetoric. There would be no grand coalition or no minority government of any hue. Instead, another messy unwanted election loomed.

So how did it all end up in such a mess?

Fine Gael had wanted the meeting earlier but acceded to Martin's wishes that it should take place after last Wednesday's second vote to nominate a taoiseach.

Diversity

At 6.15pm that evening, Kenny met with his senior Ministers and floated a bold plan. It was for a partnership government, comprising his party, Fianna Fáil and like-minded Independents. It would hold more than 100 seats, guarantee stability and the inclusion of Independents would give it diversity.

The reaction was enthusiastic. Kenny’s colleagues thought it would allow the party to regain the initiative.

Fine Gael had floated the idea of a grand coalition soon after the election but it had faded a little. Now it was making a reappearance but with a twist. What had changed was the talks with Independents. These had built unlikely new relationships, including with Waterford left-winger John Halligan. Two groups of Independents, the six-member Independent Alliance and the Denis Naughten-led group of five rural TDs were involved, as was the Dublin South West TD Katherine Zappone.

Key votes

For many of the Independents, Fianna Fáil buy-in was critical. It was not just abstention on key votes they sought from the party. It was quids in.

Fine Gael and Independent TDs had taken informal soundings from some Fianna Fáil people. They thought the idea could be sold. The problem was they were talking to the wrong people, or had misread the runes.

Sure there were some people in the party (the likes of John McGuinness, Billy Kelleher, Robert Troy and Michael McGrath were mentioned) who seemed more open to the idea. But the problem was the party leadership was vehemently opposed. And after such a strong election, Martin now held huge sway.

Given the testiness and antipathy between both men, Kenny’s meeting with Martin on Wednesday was surprisingly civil and lasted well more than an hour. Kenny’s proposal clearly took Martin by surprise. He indicated he was opposed but said he would not give a formal response until after consulting with his parliamentary party at a meeting the next morning.

Kenny again met with his Ministers after the meeting. It was now 10pm and the mood was upbeat. There was a view, said one Minister who was present, that this was an offer that Fianna Fáil would treat seriously, that it might somehow accept.

Fine Gael hastily arranged a parallel meeting of its TDs at the same time as the Fianna Fáil meeting the next morning.

The mood of the Fine Gael meeting was ebullient. It was “clappy, happy and snappy,” said one TD who attended. Kenny was praised for being imaginative and got strong backing from all speakers.

Even Waterford TD John Deasy, a persistent critic of Kenny, spoke strongly in favour. Party officials tweeted out helpful dispatches to their Fianna Fáil colleagues at the other meeting to know how on board they were. But they had miscalculated.

For the mood at the meeting room at the far side of Leinster House was markedly different. Martin set the tone early on by saying he had given the commitment he would not to go into government with Fine Gael and that he intended to stick to it.

The meeting lasted four hours. It became clear from early on that Kenny’s proposal would bite the dust. Several deputies spoke of being inundated with calls. A senior figure said: “In 2011 we were a very fractured party. People worked their arses off to make the party reconnect with its roots. Listening to those people must mean something. We cannot break our promises to them.”

Dramatic afternoon

The scale of the rejection took Fine Gael aback. In mid-afternoon, Kenny and Martin met along with notetakers for a second meeting. It was brutally short, 18 minutes in total. A veneer of civility gave way to sniping, and “it became party political very quickly,” confirmed a well-placed source.

It made for a dramatic afternoon on the plinth of Leinster House as a media hive swarmed around as the party’s protagonists emerged.

Kenny and his senior Ministers said Fianna Fáil had acted too hastily and had made a bad decision. It accused the party of putting its own interests ahead of the country.

Fianna Fáil questioned the integrity of Fine Gael’s motives and Martin repeatedly claimed Fine Gael’s approach “had left a lot to be desired”.

Suspicions

Fianna Fáil privately voiced suspicions the proposal was spurious and part of a Fine Gael ploy. Kenny had supplied no detail of how the partnership would work, one TD argued, and therefore knew it would be rejected.

“It was probably with a view to get us to support a Fine Gael minority government,” said the deputy.

Fine Gael denied this strongly. Simon Coveney argued the other party had rejected, in knee-jerk fashion, a historic proposal that would have ended civil war politics.

At one stage, they all seemed lurching towards an election. But later, Fine Gael said that now the door had been slammed shut, the only remaining option was a minority government. Coveney said the rejection by Fianna Fáil represented a “massive missed opportunity” but added that it might force the pace of negotiations that had dragged on.

A senior Fine Gael colleague said later next Thursday, April 14th, could be D-Day when a government was formed. There were early hints that Fianna Fáíl might abstain on Kenny’s nomination in that vote. With the support of 10 to 12 Independents that would allow him cross the line.

Could it mean that after 47 days, finally, a government? But if so, for how long?