The haste with which the legislation banning opinion polls was rushed through the Dail last week was almost indecent. As it happened the huge sighs of relief emitted on Friday, when the Dail rose for the summer recess, were a little premature.
The Seanad, still sitting this week, was the venue yesterday for a very embarrassing climbdown by the Government. Just as the introduction of this measure on opinion polls was ham-fisted, so too were attempts to remove it from the Electoral (Amendment) 2000 Bill.
They had hoped the controversial legislation would have passed through the Oireachtas by now and be making its way to Aras an Uachtarain for the signature of the President, Mrs McAleese.
However, it will now hang over them for the summer and have to be readdressed in the Dail in October. As well as the opinion poll provision, the Bill also provided for the capping of corporate donations; new election spending limits, which the Opposition say means Fianna Fail can spend an additional £1 million in the next general election; and an increase in funding to political parties for administration purposes.
However, there were no indications yesterday of any plans to recall the Dail before October.
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith (standing in for the Minister of State, Mr Molloy, who was originally standing in for the Minister for the Environment Mr Dempsey who was ill) made the announcement in the Seanad yesterday afternoon that the Government was withdrawing the amendment. According to a Government spokesman, the decision had been taken at a Cabinet meeting yesterday morning which was chaired by Mary Harney.
On Tuesday night, shortly after 10 p.m. and after nearly six hours of debate on the matter in the Seanad, an adjournment was announced to give time to consider an apparent loophole identified by Independent Senator Shane Ross. He tabled a number of amendments with his independent colleagues.
Mr Ross pointed out that it would be possible to take an opinion poll in advance of the ban period and publish it on the day people were going to cast their vote, or equally to take one shortly after midnight on polling day and immediately release the results.
It was a significant loophole and appeared to throw the Government side into disarray. In retrospect, they claim the plan to drop the amendment was already being considered because the cross-party consensus had disappeared. But the logic in this is faulty: the Bill had been due to conclude in the Seanad on Tuesday, and secondly this apparent difficulty was not highlighted by a Government senator.
Mr Smith, to the incredulity of many senators, said the Government, taking account of the Opposition's change of heart on this issue, had decided not to proceed with the measure. "This is the type of measure the Government will only feel comfortable with if there is an all-party consensus," he said.
Mr Ross's loophole may have been the perfect excuse for the Government to drop the troublesome measure. They feared that by next week the President would have convened a meeting of the Council of State and subsequently sent the Bill to the Supreme Court for a test of its constitutionality.
A number of opposition senators said during the debate that they would have liked to have heard the views of the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, on the constitutionality of the proposal. According to Mr Ross, the Government and the Opposition, realising public opinion was running against them, looked for a way out and they got it with his discovery.
`It was not through any great skill on the Independent benches but because the Bill was passed by the other House in such a hurry that no one there had time to consider or examine it. It was drafted in such a hurry that it was flawed in its conception and in its detail." In his Seanad contribution, Mr Smith admitted there had been some political misjudgments along the way in dealing with this matter. But the continuing disarray yesterday put this point in the realm of understatement.
Afterwards, Government sources were blaming everybody from the parliamentary drafters who drew up the legislation, to the officials from the Department of the Environment and the office of the Attorney General, for the situation they found themselves in.
The amending of the Bill, to cover the polling day loophole, had been considered, they said, but did not go ahead because it would have meant the Bill returning to the Dail, which is exactly what they wanted to avoid. Their "political judgment" had them avoiding that course of action so as not to have it dominate their return in the autumn.
Initially yesterday afternoon, Government sources were indicating that the decision instead to drop the amendment meant the Bill would not have to return to the Lower House. But as they quickly discovered, the Bill must return to the Dail anyway, because of the change made in the Seanad.
The amendment, in its original form, was first proposed by Fine Gael when the Bill was at committee stage. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Molloy, said he would accept the amendment provided there was cross-party consensus. The discussion took place last Thursday week, the day after the results of the MRBI/TG4 poll on Tipperary South showed the Fianna Fail candidate performing badly.
The following Monday the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, took questions on the matter, saying the Government believed an opinion poll ban was a good idea. But his replies were so confusing that day that even the transcript from Government Information Services had question marks following some of his more confusing sentences. The situation has become more confused since then.
Mr Molloy, who first took the idea on board, has been out of the country on a private trip so was not available yesterday to explain the background.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, who has been ill for the past few weeks (but managed to attend the Cabinet meeting yesterday), must be feeling relieved that after the embarrassment of his failure to abolish the dual mandate he cannot be blamed for this most recent debacle.
Alison O'Connor is a Political Reporter with The Irish Times