ANALYSIS:IN NORTHERN Ireland Sinn Féin is the party of government. In the Republic it is a party of opposition to the financial consensus offered by Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil. There is no inconsistency, says Gerry Adams.
In the North it is the dominant party with the DUP in the Executive that accepts swingeing spending cuts of £4 billion are inevitable. In the Republic’s election it campaigns on a platform of reversing the Finance Bill cuts and introducing a new, relatively moderate and more popular budget.
In Northern Ireland it is the party of reliable government. In the Republic it would take risks that Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and many commentators say would wreck the Southern economy.
In the North, Sinn Féin has also taken risks – but to stabilise the Executive and Assembly, notably when Martin McGuinness described as traitors the dissident republicans who murdered two British soldiers and a PSNI officer almost two years ago.
A Sinn Féin slogan could be: burn the bondholders in the South; burn the bomb-holders in the North – figuratively speaking, of course.
There is no contradiction, Sinn Féin president and Louth candidate Gerry Adams has asserted: his argument is that the British government with its take-it-or-leave-it block grant controls the purse strings for the North. If it will only supply X funds then the Northern Executive has no option but to work with that allocation.
If there were a united Ireland it would be a different matter! “We don’t have fiscal responsibility, we are arguing for it, we are trying to persuade the unionists that that’s the way to go forward,” he said recently.
But, his argument goes, in the South a new government will have control of its financial destiny, even allowing for the intervention of the EU and IMF. And it is therefore incumbent on that government to act with sovereignty and plough its own economic course. “We would reject the EU-IMF deal, which is a dig-out for greedy bankers and speculators, not a bailout for Irish citizens,” he asserted.
Still, one can’t but feel there is merit in Enda Kenny’s recent observation about the difference in Sinn Féin on both sides of the frontier. The Fine Gael leader and prospective next taoiseach said Sinn Féin “may stand for slightly different things North and South”.
“In Northern Ireland the Sinn Féin party may represent themselves as being more centreline, whereas in the Republic they would like to portray themselves as being an alternative to the Labour Party,” he said.
It seems a fair point. Sinn Féin does portray itself as edgier in the South. Martin McGuinness has frequently asserted there is no drawing back from Sinn Féin’s objective of a 32-county republic. Equally, he has insisted that it wants the Belfast Agreement in all its powersharing panoply – Northern Executive, the Assembly, North-South Ministerial Council, North-South bodies, etc – to work, and is prepared to co-operate with his more conservative coalition partners to that end.
Such assertions have at times in certain quarters prompted a degree of scepticism about Sinn Féin’s true strategy in the North. In mid to late last year a number of official and political insiders wondered would Sinn Féin sign up to a harsh budget in the face of Assembly elections in May.
One senior source suggested Sinn Féin would not launch into an election campaign, having agreed to such austere measures.
But no, Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson after some hard bargaining with the other parties and with the British treasury agreed a detailed draft budget in which every department – including education, agriculture and regional development held by Sinn Féin – will be badly hit.
For instance, capital spending at Caitríona Ruane’s Department of Education is scheduled to reduce from £169 million this year to £127 million next year, £100 million the year after that, £102 million in 2013-14 and £139 million in the final year of the four-year programme.
Capital spending at Conor Murphy’s regional development department, which had oversight for the recent Christmas water crisis, is scheduled to drop from £556 million this year to £438 million next year and £425 million the following year.
In December, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness did what many pundits thought was beyond their capability. They agreed a draft budget. And not just any draft budget, but a budget that will shear £4 billion from current and capital spending over the next four years, cutting current spending by 8 per cent and capital spending by 40 per cent.
Now a draft budget is not a formal budget and perhaps Sinn Féin could yet refuse to adopt a completed budget. But were that to happen it would be at odds with the fiscal reality Sinn Féin acknowledges confronts Northern Ireland. It would also be at variance with the regular commitments Martin McGuinness gives about wanting the Northern Executive to function as a properly governing body.
Indeed, when the draft budget deal was hammered out in December, Mr McGuinness boasted: “There were those who said this wasn’t doable. There were those who said if it was to be done, it would be done for only a year, that we would evade our responsibilities, that we would prefer to go to the Assembly elections next year on the basis of playing it safe. We’ve done none of those things.”
It seems a long way from Adams in the South radically telling the IMF “to go home and take their money with them” and urging “burning” of the bond-holders.