Is this Groundhog Day for the “new politics”? Today’s Sunday Business Post Red-C poll confirms my thesis that Irish politics have become stuck in a depressing rut of under-performance and futility.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil each enjoy the support of just a quarter of the jaded, cynical electorate.
Neither of them has any fundamental difference with the other. Why else would one invite the other into coalition or the other offer to maintain the former in power for three years?
If, as appears likely, FF will not seek a mandate to enter into government with FG after the next election and will compound that stance by out-ruling an FG-FF coalition, we are collectively stuck with a “choice” between two hotchpot coalitions kept in office on a “supply and confidence” arrangement by two equally hotchpot oppositions.
This is a recipe for permanent weakness and paralysis in our democracy. The recent flaccid budget is one token of the democratic vacuum we live in. Current industrial unrest in the public sector simply reflects an expectation of political appeasement and drift.
The Oireachtas, our national parliament, is on “stand-by” mode. Ministers and their departments have lost their appetite to legislate or to reform. They prefer to farm out the legislative function to the citizen’s forum and to farm out the Dáil’s function of political accountability to inquiries.
And as for the Left, the poll suggests that Sinn Féin may be in danger of catching Labour’s disease. AAA/PBP is capitalising on abortion, industrial unrest and rent control agitation to steal the limelight from the rest of the comrades. But still the Left’s share of the overall vote is static. No party of the Left has an appetite for office – they only have an appetite for protest. And the politics of protest is a crowded market ruled by a turbulent contest of shrillness.
When you add the Independent vote of 10% to the 51% support of the civil war parties, middle Ireland seems to heavily out-weigh the Left. But even then the breakdown of middle Ireland’s vote across FF,FG and the Independents makes for a neutered, insipid politics that lacks vision and purpose – except perhaps the “purpose of self-preservation” most effectively symbolised by Enda Kenny’s personal espousal of the long goodbye.
The much-vaunted centre is holding on by its finger nails. Middle Ireland is losing confidence in its politics.
Even the old icons are looking tarnished. Primetime’s fine exposé of the Mary Robinson Presidential Library project this week has caught the public’s attention. Far from being a gift to the Nation, the Ballina project resembles a demand for a gift from the Nation.
Mayo County Council which has no county archivist now proposes borrow and spend millions to establish a centre which will house her papers and documents excluding all the presidential papers which will remain in Áras an Uachtaráin for onward transmission in due course to the National Archives.
Our tax laws were specially changed to allow “gifts” to a body such as Mayo County Council to give rise to a tax exemption of 80% of their value for the donor. Because an independent valuer has apparently put a value of €2.5million on Robinson’s papers and memorabilia, the “gift” of those items to the Robinson Centre will give rise to a €2 million tax exemption to be applied to her future personal income which, one assumes, is largely composed of pensions from the State and the UN.
The family home in Ballina which will be incorporated in the centre is not being gifted to the State or to the people; it is to be bought by the grateful people for more than €600,000. The whole package is to involve expenditure and tax foregone in the region of € 6,600,000.
It was, then, temporarily re-assuring that Primetime was told that the former President had been initially opposed to the scheme and reluctant to take part, but had only later been “persuaded” of its merits.
Many viewers would probably have thought that her initial instincts were the correct and decent instincts we would expect from all our former presidents. And they might have wondered exactly who persuaded her to take a different path. And why?
Are all former office-holders to benefit by tax holidays based on donating their papers, documents and memorabilia to publicly funded “libraries” in future? Or is this to be a one-off?
In my judgment, the Ballina scheme should be called off before it does further damage to Irish public life. And before it needlessly damages the presidency – not to mention damage to her own place in our history.
Why not retain the simple and noble tradition that the personal archives of senior former office holders are given as a free gift to existing professionally run archives insofar as they are not destined to become part of the National Archives?
If tourism in Mayo needs investment, I guess that there are many monuments and places there which would be transformed into major tourist draws by an injection of €6.6 million.
Nor was public life enhanced by the latest clamour for breaking the linkage between a TD’s salary and the salary of a principal officer in the public service. It is a perfectly valid and defensible linkage. It pegs TDs’ pay to a public service pay-grade of equivalent responsibility. It removes the nonsense of TDs periodically having to award themselves pay-rises. Competitive self- effacement by politicians feeds an insatiable appetite for a negative appreciation of the democratic process.
Another emerging issue is that of Seanad reform. There are disturbing signs that a concerted campaign to resist reform of the way Senators are elected is being mounted in the political undergrowth. The Taoiseach has backed reform; the Government’s agreed programme includes implementation of the proposals in the Manning report to allow citizens a direct say in the election of the majority of Senators. The people back reform.
But the “new politics” is being exploited to prevent such change. Only a clear and unambiguous act of leadership on the part of Enda Kenny will prevent a cynical back-sliding on this important issue. The responsibility is his to provide that leadership.
We could have a different and better politics.
If just one TD was elected in each constituency at the next election on a policy platform based on forming a coalition with one or other of the centre parties, we could have an effective government well placed to deal with the consequences of Brexit, public pay policy issues, political reform, local government reform, reform of the grossly unfair local property tax which promises severe injustice in certain parts of the country in two years’ time, housing, health and many other issues.
Does that require a new party? It may do. It probably does.
The existing political logjam is not going to clear itself. Today’s poll makes that very clear.