Stephen Collins: Minority government faces major challenges

A government unlike any previous one in the history of the State is finally expected to emerge next week, assuming Fianna Fáil does not succumb to a panic attack over water at the last moment. The big question is will it work.

As we are entering new territory, there is no way of knowing whether a minority government underpinned by the main opposition party will usher in a new way of doing politics or lead to political paralysis with potentially disastrous implications for the Irish people.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are both taking a huge risk by agreeing to put in place a minority government whose day-to-day existence will be at the mercy of the Dáil. However, the only alternative at this stage is another election.

For Fine Gael the big danger is that they will be held hostage by Fianna Fáil and a variety of Independents and that the concessions already made on water are a sign of things to come. It is difficult enough for a party in government to retain public support while implementing its own policies but having to preside over policies dictated by the opposition could prove impossible.

On a personal level it is going to be hard for Fine Gael to swallow the prospect of Independent TD Shane Ross being in the cabinet, assuming the Independent Alliance nominate him for a position. After the election Ross publicly described Enda Kenny as “a political corpse” (he did later say he regretted the description had caused offence). It will be interesting to see how the two get on if they are in government together.

Aside from personal relations the question will also arise for the Independent Alliance about how it proposes to deal with collective cabinet responsibility, given its previous rejection of it as a policy.

National outrage

Another factor that could fatally undermine the credibility of a minority government is the kind of deals done with Independents to win their support. A range of constituency deals for individual TDs, particularly expensive ones involving hospital services, have the capacity to provoke national outrage.

The crucial difficulty is how a minority government will stand up to the pressure imposed on it by a variety of interest groups competing for the allocation of State resources. If it starts off with a series of constituency deals dictated by blatant political considerations, a bad precedent will have been set.

The greatest challenge facing any government is how to devise policies that serve the common good, rather than being dictated to by the most powerful interest groups in society.

Governments with secure majorities have often failed to do this in the past. One of the primary reasons for the financial crash was the failure to stand up to powerful interests in the construction industry and banking, allied to the pressures of social partnership that led to benchmarking and the erosion of the tax base.

Micheál Martin’s thesis is that the minority government will actually be able to do things better, a view which is now going to be put to the test.

It is arguable that minority government will pose an even bigger challenge to Fianna Fáil than to Fine Gael. All governments have to live with the fact that the benefits of office inevitably bring with them the downside of having to implement unpopular decisions.

It is one thing for a government to endure unpopularity for implementing its policies but how an opposition party is going to cope with having to take the blame for the government’s actions is another thing entirely.

It is this prospect that appears to have spooked the Fianna Fáil negotiators as the shape of a deal on Irish Water emerged in recent days. In the great scheme of things water is a relatively minor issue but the agonising over it over the last while could be an indicator of things to come on bigger issues.

For all that, a minority government could change for good the way politics operates. It will give the full Dáil the kind of input into decision-making that has been sadly lacking down the years.

The first meeting of the select Dáil committee on housing and homelessness during the week was probably a harbinger of things to come. When the 14 members of the committee gathered on Wednesday afternoon the first item on the agenda was the election of a chairman.

Given that Fine Gael had just three of the 14 members of the committee, with Fianna Fáil also having three, Sinn Féin two, Labour one, the AAA-PBP one and four Independents, it was an open question about who would get the chair.

The two nominees for the post were John Curran of Fianna Fáil and Eoin Ó Broin of Sinn Féin. Fine Gael didn’t nominate anybody.

New alliances

Curran was eventually elected by eight votes to six, getting the backing of his own party as well as from Fine Gael, Labour and Galway East TD Seán Canney, a member of the Independent Alliance. Sinn Féin had the support of the AAA-PBP, Mick Wallace, Maureen O’Sullivan and new Clare Independent Michael Harty.

There had clearly been some chat in advance of the vote between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, and what was notable was that the mainstream parties with the support of Canney managed to see off the Sinn Féin challenge.

“The minority government is working already,” said Ruth Coppinger of the AAA.

What the election of Curran demonstrated was that TDs are capable of adapting to circumstances and forming new alliances as required. Whether they can do it on a consistent basis to deliver good government is the challenge ahead.