Fianna Fáil open to supporting minority Fine Gael-Labour government

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said his party could support a Fine Gael-Labour minority government.

"We are prepared to facilitate a Fine Gael-led minority government which would be led by Fine Gael, plus others," he told reporters yesterday after Fianna Fáil's annual 1916 commemoration at Arbour Hill in Dublin.

He confirmed his party could also support a minority government which would include the Labour Party: “Yes, I have said that is a reality,” he said.

Asked if it would be putting back in power the government Fianna Fáil had argued should be put out of office, Mr Martin said: “We cannot get the composition we sought as a government, because others have a higher number.

Progress

“We are very clear about that. There is a change emerging in Irish politics and we want to embrace that change and in terms of a new way Dáil Éireann is working .”

Earlier, speaking at the commemoration, he said the mistakes of the past, including the “Irish Water fiasco” could be blamed on the arrogance of a majority government.

Crises in health, housing “and many other areas” had developed because of the “policies of the strongest and most stable majority government in recent times”.

“It represents real progress to move to a system with a less arrogant and dominating government – and where all TDs have a right and obligation to contribute,” he said.

Addressing ongoing attempts to form a government, Mr Martin said: “We have been and we will continue to be flexible. We are willing to allow a new form of government to develop. It will end the old and discredited approach and it will certainly be more complex – however simply carrying on as in the past is not an option.”

He said the challenges faced today were “nothing compared to the challenges faced and overcome by the heroes of 1916. They inspired a national awakening and invigorated a republican spirit which still represents our country at its best”.

“We come here not simply to remember the past but to once again renew our allegiance to the republicanism of 1916.

“Since then our party has come to this place every year to honour those who did not live to see what their patriotism and their bravery achieved for our country.”

Outrage

Mr Martin said it was “an outrage” that the Provisional Republican Movement had “sought to rewrite history and claim direct continuity from 1916”.

“In the middle of what has been a great national commemoration, there continues to be one deeply cynical and dangerous attempt to exploit the heroes of 1916.

“Provisional Sinn Féin was founded in 1970 to support a campaign rejected constantly by the mass of the Irish people in vote after vote for quarter of a century. The manner in which they have sought to rewrite history and claim direct continuity from 1916 is an outrage.

“Unable to achieve the electoral breakthrough they long claimed was inevitable, they are now using more underhand methods to legitimise themselves. In the very room where the Irish Volunteers first met they are today running an exhibition which claims to be about 1916, but it is solely about twisting history.

“Even though a Sinn Féin officer is running it out of Sinn Féin HQ, they pretend to the public that it is an independent exhibition. They claim that to honour Pearse, Clarke and Plunkett you must honour a sinister organisation which tried to destroy this State and continues to refuse to subject its members to the laws enacted by the Irish people.”