Much hinges on Donohoe, perhaps even the future of the Government

The bitter exchanges between Government and Opposition in the Dáil in recent days illuminated the atmosphere you can expect to prevail in politics from now until the next general election: acrid, personal, partisan, antagonistic.

The Government is willing to fight tooth and nail for Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe’s survival because of his immense importance to the functioning and coherence of the Government. If Paschal goes, one senior Fianna Fáiler says, the Coalition is gone by Christmas. The same thought has clearly occurred to Sinn Féin.

The caricature of Donohoe on Oliver Callan’s satirical radio show presents the Minister as a playfully spoken fella whose happy-go-lucky approach masks a sharp and hard-bitten politician capable of playing the game just as fiercely as any of the others who face Callan’s merciless ridicule. It’s not that far from the truth.

Donohoe has been at the top table of political leadership for almost a decade, minister for finance for five years, minister for public expenditure for four, in the Cabinet for nine. He has steered the country’s economy and public finances through the latter stages of the recovery from the financial crash and the grinding austerity that followed it, to the pandemic and the complete shutdown of most social and economic life, through to the astonishing bounceback that followed last year’s great reopening. He handed over a surplus of €5 billion at the end of last year after, having retained the confidence of Ireland’s multinational cash cow despite agreeing to raise the totemic 12.5 per cent rate of corporation tax.

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[ Who is Michael Stone, the one-time ESB apprentice who paid for Paschal Donohoe’s postering? ]

The huge current surpluses enabled him to deliver – with his Fianna Fáil colleague and now Minister for Finance Michael McGrath – the biggest budget in the history of the State, giving away €11 billion in tax cuts, welfare increases and one-off payments that have (so far, anyway) insulated the Coalition from the icy political winds of the wave of inflation that has swept Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you want to see what a cost-of-living crisis looks like without the cushion of the Irish public finances, look at the UK, where the governing Conservatives are currently 20 points behind Labour and the country is periodically paralysed by public-sector strikes.

You do not have to be a fan of Donohoe, nor to agree with his policies or political philosophy, to recognise that he has been – on his own terms and those of his party – a successful Minister. Just as you don’t have to like Mary Lou McDonald to acknowledge how she has been extraordinarily successful in extending the appeal of Sinn Féin; or you don’t need to have warm feelings about Gerry Adams to recognise how effective he was in carrying out his political strategy. Political analysis is best done dispassionately.

European context

He is also one of the few politicians minded to put an intellectual framework on his politics – more than any member of Government, he has articulated the case for the political centre in Ireland. The Donohoe version of events places Irish politics in a post-crash European context where fragmentation and the building of new alliances are the order of the day, rather than a narrowly national one where personalities and traditional allegiances matter more than everything. Unopposed for a second term as head of the Eurogroup, he persuaded the euro-zone finance ministers to allow two Irishmen to attend their meetings in order to keep him as chair. He is probably the Irish politician who is most highly regarded in Europe and internationally.

So how did this most substantial and careful of politicians make such a dangerous error in an area – statutory declarations – where there is such little room for it? His explanations have been consistent, but sketchy. Not realising this was important when it first reared its head was a blunder. Having to issue repeated statements about a controversy is deeply damaging. Few around Government expect him to fall, but there is much greater nervousness about the controversy now than there was a few days ago. Worryingly for Donohoe, his statements are making things worse, not better. Some senior Government figures now expect, and would almost welcome, a motion of no confidence. It would enable them to circle the wagons and – they hope – put the affair behind them.

That Donohoe made a mistake and may reasonably face some sort of sanction is indisputable. We should also have the honesty to admit that the system of electoral declarations for politicians – though necessary – is inconsistent and somewhat pettifogging. A standardised online form detailing all election expenditure that is audited before acceptance by Standards in Public Office Commission lawyers and accountants would surely be a better system than the current procedure whereby politicians interpret the requirements of the declarations themselves and the documents sit ignored until someone makes a complaint. The truth is that there is hardly a politician in Leinster House who wants a thorough investigation of their electoral spending returns. Campaigns are chaotic, and declarations are compiled with sometimes fuzzy hindsight, to put it kindly. This applies as much to Sinn Féin as to anyone else.

It is also surely silly to insist that the only possible penalty for an infraction is resignation. Shooting someone is against the law; so is parking on a double-yellow line. There are degrees of seriousness to everything.

In a broader sense, this sort of controversy is what happens to politicians when a party is a long time in office. The Government is hardly a month into the second part of its existence after the changeover between Varadkar and Martin; already there has been one resignation. A second would be a catastrophe.

As it faces into the phase of its term that will end with a general election, the Coalition needs a forward-looking narrative, a sense it is getting down to business and making progress, a men (and women) at work sign outside the office. The opening weeks of Varadkar’s premiership have seen the opposite.