Green opinion finely balanced as delegates face decision day

ANALYSIS:The Green Party is due to meet today to pass what its leaders hope is a new – and better – deal for governing with Fianna Fáil

AN OLD Leinster House hand remarked recently that: “When this place goes into a wobble, it hardly ever gets out of it.” In other words, when things start to go wrong for the government of the day, it invariably ends up having to cut short its term and go to the country.

Technically, the next general election is not due until 2012 but you will not get anybody in political life to put a bet on Brian Cowen and company surviving until then. The dissolution of the Dáil will take place sooner than that, but the question is when?

The 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” And it can safely be said that the talks between Fianna Fáil and the Greens have received the two parties’ full concentration.

There is a myth going around about the Greens which any seasoned member of the Oireachtas will happily explode. This is the canard that the smaller Government party is populated and run by what one country TD called  “woolly heads”.

On the contrary, John Gormley and his friends are experienced professionals who know the facts of political life and have shown considerable skill at achieving power and holding onto it. A former minister who has served for decades in the Dáil spoke admiringly of their skill in hiving-off the issue of Bertie Ahern’s finances by sticking rigidly to the position that the findings of the Mahon tribunal would have to be awaited.

This was in contrast with the Progressive Democrats, who allowed themselves to be impaled on a political hook in this regard. The ex-minister also admired the way Senator Dan Boyle had been used as a lightning rod for internal party discontent to the extent that some even thought he was a dissident member rather than party chairman and part of the leadership.

Green Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan has impressed his Coalition partners with his “very responsible” approach to economic issues in the protracted talks on a revised programme for government and his unremitting focus, from a Green perspective, on the need to create new and sustainable jobs.

Yesterday, as the talks continued into the evening, Green sources were saying that 90 per cent of the package was agreed. But it’s always the last few items that are the most difficult.

One of the major concerns was said to be keeping on side Paul Gogarty, the feisty and unpredictable Green TD for Dublin Mid-West. Party dissidents have been watching Gogarty very closely as well, in the hope that he would break ranks over the controversial Nama or some other issue. Education is particularly important to the Greens and, with Gogarty as education spokesman, it was guaranteed top billing in the negotiations.

The increase in the pupil-teacher ratio from 27 to 28 in last October’s budget has been a sore point for Gogarty, who wrote a strong letter to Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe at the time, urging him to show  “courage and common sense” by redressing the “damaging cutbacks” in class sizes and other areas.

Political reform has been another key issue, with the Green pushing for a reduction in the number of TDs. Unsurprisingly, the Fianna Fáil side was distinctly less enthusiastic about such a move.

However, sources said the bigger party was more open to other elements of the reform agenda such as reductions in expenses, with Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan having an input on this issue. The Greens were particularly anxious, as one of their senior members put it, “to clean up politics and put respect back into the political system”.

The two negotiating teams met in Eamon Ryan’s office on the ministerial corridor in Leinster House.

The Greens did not want to meet on Fianna Fáil turf. The smaller party also had a  “reference group” made up of other members of the parliamentary party, councillors and head office people. This back-up team was closeted from an early stage this week in Agriculture House on Kildare Street, which is part of the Oireachtas complex.

The relationship between the programme for government talks and the forthcoming budget on December 9th has attracted little attention.

It was interesting, however, that Gogarty went on the record late this week to say that, on the strict condition that the education sector was protected, the Greens were “prepared to make some of the toughest, hardest, most difficult but most necessary decisions in the forthcoming budget in the interests of the country”.

Sources were saying agreement had been reached on “substantial” reform at local government level. On Oireachtas members’ salaries, the Fianna Fáil side was said to be anxious that any alterations which might take place should be tied in with public sector pay rates, which are under intense scrutiny at the moment.

In the tense atmosphere prevailing in the earlier part of yesterday, nobody was willing to predict a positive outcome. Even today’s planned meeting to get the members’ verdict on the revised programme for government and Nama was in the balance.

If sufficient progress could be made between the two teams, then Cowen and Gormley would meet with a view to closing the deal. Then it would be over to the 800 members who had signed up for today’s gathering at the RDS.

After the last general election in June 2007, the six Green TDs were not strictly necessary for then Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern to secure a majority, but the vicissitudes of political life mean they are now crucial to the Government’s survival and, as a senior Green put it: “We were just another leg of the stool in 2007. Now we are the goddamned stool.”

Deaglán de Bréadún is a Political Correspondent