FG-Labour pact must be defined by national interest

INSIDE POLITICS:Although the parties have a background of successful coalition, this deal would be unlike any other

FINE GAEL and Labour are on the verge of a decision on coalition that will have profound implications not only for the State but for the long-term prospects of each party.

The parties have entered coalition together at regular intervals over the past 60 years but never in circumstances remotely like those of today.

On a purely political level both parties are in new and unfamiliar territory. Fine Gael is the largest party in the State for the first time in its history and Labour the second-largest for the first time. If they agree to form a government, it will have the largest majority since the foundation of the State.

The two parties did the first of their six coalition deals in 1948 and their last in 1994. On most of those occasions they had a slim majority and sometimes no majority at all. At all times they faced a powerful Fianna Fáil opposition that was utterly ruthless in its determination to bring them down.

This time around things are very different. For a start, Fine Gael and Labour have options other than forming a coalition. With 76 seats Fine Gael will almost certainly be able to elect Enda Kenny as taoiseach next Wednesday, with or without Labour.

One of Ireland’s leading political scientists, Peter Mair, professor of comparative politics at the European University in Florence, wondered during the week why the option of a Fine Gael minority government supported by Fianna Fáil in a reverse Tallaght strategy was not regarded as the most likely outcome following the election.

He suggested Fine Gael had the mandate to go into government and implement its policies while the motivation for Fianna Fáil was to avoid a general election for a very long time by keeping Fine Gael in power to implement the four-year plan. In this situation Fine Gael would not do any deals with Independents but would govern with the tacit support of Fianna Fáil.

Labour too has other options. After its best result to date, there is a strong argument for going into opposition and forcing the right-left divide in Irish politics that has been the cherished ambition of the party for more than half a century. With a Christian democratic party in government and a social democratic party supplying the main opposition, Irish politics would finally have adjusted to the standard European spectrum.

The trouble is there are even more important issues than party political logic at play. The State has arrived at one of the most dangerous moments in its history and the last thing it needs is a bout of political instability which could push it over the edge.

Fine Gael and Labour are not contemplating a coalition like any they have entered previously. At this stage what they are effectively negotiating is the formation of a national government and the task facing that government is to get the Republic back on its feet and out of the EU-IMF protectorate it has become as a consequence of the past decade’s disastrous policies.

Assuming agreement is reached on a programme for government, the coalition will have such a massive majority that it should be able to withstand the loss of TDs who find the going too tough. With 113 TDs in the Dáil, as against 53 for the combined opposition, it will have the kind of stability it needs to implement whatever decisions are required.

Even so, there is no automatic guarantee of long-term survival. When the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition was assembled at the end of 1992 it had a record majority with 103 TDs. There was a widespread assumption it would win two terms and govern for the remainder of the decade. In the event it lasted a little less than two years, mainly due to personality differences between then taoiseach Albert Reynolds and then tánaiste Dick Spring.

Labour was able to leave the coalition in 1994 without triggering a general election because the Dáil arithmetic changed due to several byelection results. A rainbow government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left came to power in the middle of the Dáil term, the only occasion that has happened.

This time the arithmetic could also facilitate a change of government without an election if problems arise down the road and Labour leave government. If that happened, Fine Gael could look for Fianna Fáil support to continue in office and it might get it.

At this stage there is no reason to suspect anything like that will happen. Kenny and Gilmore seem to have a much higher regard for each other than Reynolds and Spring had. Although the negotiating teams have reportedly being doing some tough talking, there is a mutual respect among the senior figures in Fine Gael and Labour that should enable them to withstand tough times.

The two parties also have a history of working together in the national interest and, while it may not always have been appreciated by the electorate, that shared history – going back to the foundation of the State – provides a glue that should enable a coalition to resist pressure from left or right in the new Dáil.

Getting the public finances in order and restoring the banks to health are the twin issues that will have to take priority. Fraught moments in the talks appear to have arisen on the question of fiscal policy and who should be minister for finance. If agreement can be reached on policy, the question of who occupies the finance post is very much a secondary consideration. In any case there is nothing to prevent the appointment of two senior ministers to the department.

The overriding task facing the coalition is to rebuild the economy and, with it, trust in our political institutions. Negotiating a programme for government will be the easy part.