Resignation of Sligo Two cuts odds of getting budget passed

ANALYSIS:Impact on Greens and Independents is potentially the most damaging outcome, writes STEPHEN COLLINS.

THE DECISION of the two Sligo Fianna Fáil TDs to resign from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party must raise serious questions about the Coalition’s ability to get what will probably be one of the toughest budgets in the history of the State through the Dáil in December.

Jimmy Devins and Eamon Scanlon have been making it clear that their decision to resign the whip over the closure of the cancer unit at Sligo General Hospital does not mean that they will be lining up to vote against the Government when the Dáil comes back in the autumn.

It was notable that Taoiseach Brian Cowen didn’t waver in his dealings with the two TDs over the past two weeks. He is clearly trying to send a message to his party and the public that the Government will not waver over the next few months if other backbenchers threaten to walk.

Nonetheless, the resignation of the Sligo Two has added a further element of instability into an already volatile political situation. The real danger for the Government is that the prospect of even more Fianna Fáil defections in the run-up to the budget could cause panic among the Greens and lead to a collapse of the Coalition.

When Bertie Ahern put his four-party Coalition together in the summer of 2007 it was regarded as impregnable. Instead of simply doing the obvious deal with the Greens, which would have given it a secure majority by Irish standards, he tagged on the two surviving Progressive Democrats and three of the four Independents.

Following the election of John O’Donoghue as Ceann Comhairle, the Government had the support of 78 Fianna Fáil TDs (including the temporarily exiled Beverley Flynn) the six Greens, two PDs and three Independent TDs giving it a total voting strength in the Dáil of 89, as against 76 for the combined Opposition.

Two years later that very comfortable majority has evaporated with the Government down to 82 solid Dáil votes as against a notional 82 for the combined Opposition.

That Opposition total figure includes the Sligo Two and Dr James McDaid, who are now operating outside the Fianna Fáil whip. They won’t be voting against the Government, at least in the short term, unlike Wicklow TD Joe Behan, who resigned from the Fianna Fáil organisation last autumn and has regularly voted with the Opposition.

The most potentially damaging outcome of the defections is the impact it will have on the Greens and the remaining two Independents in the Coalition fold, Michael Lowry and Jackie Healy Rae.

After the disastrous European and local election results the Greens announced that they wanted to engaged in a review of the programme for government they signed up for in 2007. That review has still to begin but the crucial thing is that its results will have to be ratified by a two-thirds majority at a Green Party conference in October.

Conventional political wisdom is that the Greens desperately need to avoid an early election and that means hanging on in power at all costs. The theory is that Fianna Fáil will give them a few juicy commitments on their core issues such as climate change, planning and energy policy and that will be enough for them to sign up for the remainder of the term.

The Greens might well be willing to go along with that if they could be reasonably sure the Government will go the distance. However, the stream of Fianna Fáil defections has, at the very least, created serious doubts about that prospect. The nightmare scenario, which the Greens have to weigh carefully, is that the party could sign up for a savage budget only to see it defeated because of defecting Fianna Fáil TDs.

That outcome would plunge the Greens into a general election as an adjunct of a deeply unpopular Fianna Fáil and could spell not just a bad election result but the end of the party. Comparisons with the last days of the PDs are already featuring in Green thinking and will undoubtedly be in the minds of party members in October.

An alternative for the party would be to stage-manage a withdrawal from Coalition, having failed to agree with Fianna Fáil on the review of the programme for government. That would free the Greens from having to defend the budget in the ensuing general election but there is no guarantee that that would avert an electoral disaster. One way or another the Greens have fundamental choices to make in the next couple of months.

The two Independents who have backed the Coalition since 2007 also have choices to make. In the case of Jackie Healy Rae, who comes from the Fianna Fáil gene pool and who has benefited massively from supporting the party in office since 1997, the likelihood is that he will stick with the Coalition.

Michael Lowry, on the other hand, will not want to be put in the position of voting for a deeply unpopular Fianna Fáil budget if some of the party’s own backbenchers can’t stomach it. Like most other TDs the former Fine Gael minister won’t relish the prospect of an early general election, but with a secure base in Tipperary North he is in a more comfortable position than many others. The more unstable the political situation gets, the more likely he is to jump ship.

The political instability generated by the Sligo TDs, coming on top of everything else on the Government’s plate, means there is a very real chance that the Coalition may not be able to get its budget through the Dáil in December. That is something that Ministers will try hard not to think about during their August holidays.

Stephen Collins is Political Editor of The Irish Times