Women on the verge of a political breakthrough

MARY Harney stands now on the verge of what could the biggest breakthrough in her political career. She could be the first woman Tanaiste and sitting at the Cabinet table for the first time within a matter of weeks. She is playing for high stakes in the forthcoming general election.

Aged 44 and a member of the Oireachtas for 20 years, she, unlike other party leaders, has travelled a long and winding path since she was first nominated to the Seanad by former Taoiseach Jack Lynch in 1977. Bertie Ahern entered the Dail that same year.

Ms Harney was first elected to the Dail for Dublin South West in Charles Haughey's first general election in 1981. By the beginning of the following year, 1982, she was opposing the style and substance of his leadership in every internal Fianna Fail challenge. Bertie Ahern was on the other side, as Mr Haughey's chief whip. In those years, she displayed more courage than most of the elder males around her.

She, more than any other individual, was instrumental in getting Des O'Malley to found the Progressive Democrats with her in late 1985. From that stage, Mary Harney came into her own, displaying a talent for public speaking which still makes her one of the very few orators in the Dail. She wore the mantle, often alluded to within the party, of The Mother Foundress.

Led by Des O'Malley and with Michael McDowell, she can claim to have broken the mould of Irish politics, not in the PDs' first election in 1987, but when the party entered coalition with Fianna Fail in 1989. Mr Haughey was forced to cast off the core value of generations, leading Fianna Fail into its first government with another party. Ms Harney was appointed Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, with special responsibility for environmental protection. Her major achievement there was getting rid of the smog in Dublin by banning the use of smoky coal.

It was during the government, in early 1992, that the PDs made clear that Mr Haughey's position was untenable over the Sean Doherty phonetapping revelations. Mr Haughey was forced by his own party to resign as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fail. The Fianna Fail/PD combination survived, under Albert Reynolds as Taoiseach, for only nine months.

Back in Opposition, Ms Harney went on to become Mr O'Malley's successor, the first woman leader of a national party, 3 1/2 years ago. The fall out from the contest was eventually to cost her two parliamentary members, Pat Cox and Martin Cullen.

It is a bizarre irony that the paths of Charles J. Haughey, Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney are crossing again now against the backdrop of the Dunnes Stores payments tribunal at Dublin Castle and the imminent election to choose between two alternative alliances for government. What should be a defining moment for the PDs is being sacrificed to minimise the damage to their coalition partners. To the surprise of even Fianna Fail, they have pulled their punches on Mr Haughey equating party payments to Fine Gael and business payments to Michael Lowry with the alleged personal payments to the then Fianna Fail Taoiseach.

The past is the past and its now forward to the future. Mary Harney and her party are nervously waiting for the calling of the election privately believing, as many of their prospective partners do, that they have only a 50/50 chance of forming the next government.

That government, in Mary Harney's view, would be based on trust between its two leaders. She has known Bertie Ahern for 20 years. She has stated publicly that he is an honest man. She claims that she gets on better with him than have any former coalition party leaders.

There is another factor mentioned by party insiders to buttress their belief that Fianna Fail would be different in a new coalition. Fianna Fail must have learned a lesson, they argue, from the events leading up to the fall of the government with Labour in 1994. Once bitten, twice shy. Fianna Fail would behave honourably towards its next coalition partner, they say, in a way that it has not done in its last two governments.

Irrespective of the number of seats the PDs will win, Mary Harney expects to be the first woman Tanaiste in the history of the State. She may have refused to say so publicly and Michael McDowell may be weakening the office with his call last Wednesday to scrap the Tanaiste's Department which costs £1.64 million per annum, but she has one thing in common with Dick Spring. The Tanaiste's position for the smaller party has evolved into the symbol of a coalition partnership.

Beyond that, Ms Harney realises that the Cabinet posts to be demanded if Fianna Fail and the PDs form the next administration will depend on the number of PD deputies returned to the new Dail. If that number is small, Mr McDowell may not get to fulfil his wish to become Attorney General. Ms Harney's most influential colleague may be forced to play a more public political role in a ministry.

THOUGH Ms Harney and her advisers are loath to speculate about the composition of a Fianna Fail/PD Cabinet, the next two contenders for ministerial posts would be Des O'Malley and Liz O'Donnell. While observers would believe that Mr O'Malley would bring authority and experience to the Cabinet table, insiders are not at all clear about whom she would choose.

The party is far more forthcoming about the policies it would bring into government. In order of priority, set out by the PD leader, they would include taxation, privatisation, Northern Ireland and standards in office.

Ms Harney has recently described radical tax reform as "the cornerstone of the Progressive Democrats' participation in government". She has been using the party's tax record in government between 1989-1992 as a political tool in the election campaign to criticise the Labour Party. The PDs make much of the fact that, over those years, they secured cuts in the basic rate of tax from 32 per cent to 27 per cent, the higher rate from 56 per cent to 48 per cent, increased tax allowances and widened the standard rate band.

In their election manifesto, the PDs are committed to reducing the present basic rate of tax from 26 per cent to 20 per cent; reducing the higher tax rate from 48 per cent to 40 per cent; phasing out employees' PRSI and the two levies; and increasing bands and allowances so that nobody on less than the average industrial wage is taxed at the higher rate.

How that programme can be afforded is a matter which has, over a short time, drawn different answers from the party. "Can we afford not to?" is the reply in the policy document. "Economic growth means that tax reform no longer requires cuts in public spending. What it does require is the political commitment to reduce the burden of tax on all those who work for a living".

The finance spokesman, Mr McDowell, expanded on this theme in a speech last Friday, revealing that the Department of Finance had costed the PD tax cuts programme at £1,325 million, £265 million a year over five years. This is less than the £300 million in tax cuts provided for every year of the Partnership 2000 programme.

He suggested that a five year programme of tax reform with an annual value of less than the cuts provided in the Partnership 2000 programme "is well within our grasp" as long as two things were done: keep real growth in public spending between 1 per cent and 2 per cent; and keep public sector pay growth pegged at or near inflation in order to share economic growth by increasing real take home pay.

Ms Harney's party is distinguished from the other parties by its policy on privatisation. The principles - though not the details - of the PDs' "New Deal" for State companies were set out in her leadership address to the party's national conference in Bunratty last November. "In the modern world there is no rationale for State involvement in the running of hotels, fertiliser factories, and other commercial enterprises," she stated.

She is a firm believer in privatising some of the State companies and using the money to reduce the huge national debt of £3 billion. Privatisation, in her view, would allow State companies to prosper in their own right - without being dependent on the taxpayer. Privatisation would also allow the workers in those companies to participate in their success through share ownership.

IN the run up to the election campaign, there are sharp differences between the PDs and their potential partners in these, as well as other, policy areas.

Ms Harney's taxation programme would appear to conflict with the speech made by the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Ahern at the recent ardfheis when he in a summary paragraph, promised to "cut crime, cut unemployment cut spending, cut taxes, cut out pollution, pursue peace on this island and empower people at local level to do their best for Ireland, and for themselves". Fianna Fail's stated aim on many occasions, in advance of the publication of its manifesto, is to cut the top tax rate of 54.75 per cent, including levies, to 50 per cent over a five year period in government.

The PD policy on privatisation and the public sector has sent shivers up the spines of leading Fianna Fail members in recent months. Furthermore, the implementation of Ms Harney's policy priorities would seem to be incompatible with the commitments in Partnership 2000, already taken on board by Fianna Fail and the PDs.

The two parties seem poles apart on EMU participation. Fianna Fail is committed to Ireland's immediate entry to EMU while the PDs, in a statement from Mr McDowell as recently as last month, has the strongest reservations unless Britain joins.

It is on the question of Northern Ireland and the handling of the peace process that the greatest differences have emerged between the potential government partners during their last 2 1/2 years in opposition. Yet, it is the area in which Ms Harney is most confident that the parties can do business. The Downing Street Declaration has drawn a curtain on Civil War politics, she believes, and a consensus is possible. Her party may have some misgivings, however, about the definition of Mr Albert Reynolds's promised role as Northern envoy.

On her first electoral outing as leader, Mary Harney is irrevocably tied in to Fianna Fail in her attempt to get into government. A Fine Gael/PD government would have been her first option. She will focus hard on Dick Spring and the Labour Party throughout the campaign and most members of her parliamentary party regard the Labour leader's Limerick speech as "manna from Heaven". It brought Fianna Fail to the altar rails.

MS Harney's advisers believe the party will reap some benefit in the first election in Ireland with a woman party leader. They hope that what they call "the Robinson factor" will click into gear. The opinion polls to date, however, would indicate that her personal popularity, consistently higher than any other leader, it is not translating into support for party candidates on the ground. The Spring aide of 1992 has not come in yet for any party.

Insiders say the party would be happy to increase from eight to 12 seats, rather than the 15 or 16 seats mentioned publicly, in this election. Their best chance of a new seat, they say, is in Waterford. They quote poll data to suggest that Katharine Bulbulia will win a seat "at Martin Cullen's expense, unfortunately". Their next best bet is with Jim Gibbons in Carlow/Kilkenny. They list Senator Cathy Honan in Laois/Offaly, Senator John Dardis in South Kildare and Dr Mary Grehan in Louth next in winning order. The leader, they say, is polling 30 per cent in Dublin SouthWest.

As a potential coalition leader and member of the Cabinet, Mary Harney is untested going into her most important election. Her politics are instinctive and populist, rather than ideological. She would not see the PDs as a niche party. Her political judgment is sometimes faulty, frequently short term. But she possesses a journalist's eye for the right question and the good headline.

These characteristics were vividly illustrated recently when she called for the Blood Transfusion Service Board to be dissolved in the blood products scandal, and in the water charges controversy.

Professing the highest of principles, it took Ms Harney four months to arrive at the position that the party was, after all, in favour of water charges. She did not demur publicly when her environment spokesman, Mr Bobby Molloy, announced in February that the PDs would provide £23 million or "whatever is required" to the rural water lobby groups.

It was the millstone of that £23 million around her neck, according to informed sources, which led to her decision that the abolition of water charges was an act of "electoral folly". Fianna Fail was angered by her apparent Uturn. But, more important by far, it demonstrated to all her volatile nature under pressure.

She established her political leadership with her televised Dail speeches on the twists and turns of events leading to the downfall of Mr Reynolds's government. She is an accomplished public speaker when the emotional content is good. But she tends not to grade her condemnation and indignation in accordance with the gravity of the issues.

Ms Harney will be severely tested in the coming weeks. The strongest card she has to play in the election is frequently mentioned by her prospective partners. In qualitative research, Fianna Fail says, Mary Harney's high popularity rating arises from the public perception that she has sacrificed a personal life for politics.