Well, it looks like it’s a done deal in the south of Ireland, wouldn’t you say? The Greens will go into coalition with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. A lot of money will be borrowed and a lot of money spent – for example, there’ll be approximately €1 million a day devoured on improving walking and bicycling routes. The government will be committed to a 7% reduction in carbon emissions. And, somewhere up ahead Fine Gael anticipates tax cuts. Oh, and Leo will be Taoiseach for the first two-and-a-half years and Micheál doing the job in the second two-and-a-half years of the government’s life.
There are a few things we might do well to keep clear in our mind on this matter.
- Health Minister Simon Harris could have been a great actor. Yesterday on RTÉ’s Sunday Politics, he declared that Fine Gael had stood back and allowed Sinn Féin to have a go at forming a government. They failed to do this. “When was the last time Sinn Féin even had a meeting with other parties to form a government?” In Simon’s view, it was a long, long time ago – fado, fado.
So why do I say Simon could have been a great actor? Because he’s successfully blamed Sinn Féin for not forming a government for change. Eh, hang on there, Simon. Sinn Féin repeatedly asked both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to meet with a view to doing just that. Both parties simply refused to meet with the party which won most first preference votes in the general election. The reason the Shinners haven’t met with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael is that these two parties refused. Let’s keep our focus on that, shall we? The reason there wasn’t a coalition government including Sinn Féin is that both FF and FG bluntly refused to even talk about it. So the failure lies with Fine Gael and particularly Fianna Fáil (the Republican Party), not with Sinn Féin.
2. Irish farmers in general aren’t massively keen on the Greens. They believe that party will make moves to stop cows emitting methane gas (no, Virginia – 90-95% of cow-emitted gas does not come in the form of cow farts, it comes in the form of cow burps). The new government will try to stop the farmers’ mouths with gold, mainly borrowed gold. But the Green Party plans and traditional Irish farming are incompatible. Either the Greens prevail and farmers turn their wrath on Fianna Fáil, or the farmers prevail and the Green Party will learn, once again, that signing into a coalition with bigger parties is to sign up to a near-death electoral experience.
3. The new government will face an economic wasteland, thanks to the repercussions of Covid-19 and lock-down. Come next year, and you can add the hob-nailed boot of Brexit to an already bloody and bruised economy. Will FG and FF somehow spin a positive story out of that? Watch this. space.
4. The reference in the agreed document to action on the “Occupied Territories” does not – repeat not – refer to the north of Ireland. In fact, Ireland stops just a bit past Dundalk. It refers to Palestine.
5. Finally, people marvel at the way in which the two Civil War parties have set aside differences and finally united in government. Perhaps they’ve forgotten what the Civil War was about? It was about those republicans who desperately wished for a totally liberated country, with no internal border, fighting against former comrades who had acceded to partition and the abandonment of the nationalist population in the north.
But for decades now -maybe for a century – neither party has made a single significant move to address the brutal fact of partition. So what’s left to disagree on? The coalition of FG and FF is completely logical. Stand by for both parties to resist fist and boot any attempt by anyone to have a border poll.
It promises to be an interesting five years. Or less.
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