Enda and Micheál: the best of enemies

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? The process of forming a government from the 32nd Dáil has been distinguished above all by its glacial pace. Even as the airwaves and opinion columns have throbbed with impatience, days of meetings have followed each other with monotonous regularity and tediously inconclusive outcomes.

Everyone is talking, they say. Everyone is being constructive.

Those on the outside demand they get on with it. And they do, but slowly. Meanwhile, assertions that the Irish people are demanding a resolution have intensified in inverse proportion to the evidence for them.

But look a little closer, beyond the harrumphing about how long the whole thing is taking, and there are important things happening and real changes taking place.

The process of recent weeks tells us much about how our politics is changing – and about how it is not. We are watching the passing of an era of majority-only governments. This is a moment of transition: from strong, big-party-dominated administrations to a fragmented political landscape.

See the contortions of Independent TDs, elected on anti-establishment tickets, as they slowly reel themselves in towards government, perhaps ending the free pass that Independent candidates have long enjoyed in Irish politics.

And watch the eternal wary circling of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Even as the clamour for them to get together grows louder and louder they remain as steadfastly apart as ever. The antipathy and distrust between the two old parties remain fundamental to the way our politics works. Many things are changing. But not everything.

Ten days ago the slow bicycle race of government formation jolted, wobbled and accelerated just a little. Earlier that day the new Dáil had failed to elect a taoiseach for the second time since the general election. And there seemed little prospect that it would ever manage to do so.

Separate negotiations

The endless hours of separate negotiations between the two big parties and Independent TDs – individually and collectively – had not moved the Dáil numbers a jot.

Later that evening the acting Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, met Micheál Martin, the Fianna Fáil leader, for the first time since the election to discuss government formation. The venue was a nondescript room in the corridor at the back of the Leinster House complex where minsters have their Dáil offices.

Although structurally in a wing of Government Buildings, it is actually part of the Oireachtas complex, so technically it is neutral parliamentary ground. Little else about the talks was so neatly planned.

Kenny and Martin don’t get on. That has been obvious to anyone who has observed them in recent years, and it is confirmed by people close to both men. Taoisigh and those who directly oppose them rarely have an easy rapport, but there is an extra-sharp edge to relations between the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil leaders.

The shock defeat at the general election took a heavy toll on Kenny personally. Normally ebullient and irrepressible, he was gloomy, depressed and taciturn after count day. His countenance couldn’t hide it.

Those who see him frequently him confirm that he was in poorer spirits than they had seen before, although some say that he was revived, at least temporarily, by his St Patrick’s Day trip to Washington, DC.

“He looks like he’s ready to throw his hat at it,” said one person in regular contact with him. Sometimes in politics, Kenny previously said, you get a wallop. He had never got one like this before.

But Kenny has often been underestimated. One of his lesser-known qualities is resilience. Ever since he became party leader he has bounced back from setback after setback. In a way he became taoiseach because he was able to stay standing for long enough that all other rivals fell away. That quality has enabled him to bulldoze through the past few weeks.

The meeting between the two men rattled along reasonably. Towards the end Kenny made his move: he was pessimistic about the prospects for stable government in a minority with the Independents. He favoured a “full partnership” with Fianna Fáil: would Martin do it? The Independents, he said, could be part of it too. Feeling ambushed, Martin played for time. He would consult his parliamentary party.

Political manoeuvre

But the meeting was hardly over when it became obvious that the suggestion was not going to fly. Martin knew that, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get his party activists to back such a deal – and he knew that Kenny was aware of that too. He thought it was a political manoeuvre, pure and simple.

Fine Gael, furious that the offer to transform Irish politics was being thrown back in their faces, briefed that Fianna Fáil was clearly putting the party interest before the national interest.

“But that’s what they always do,” hissed one Fine Gael source.

The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael accounts of the meeting directly contradicted each other. Martin said that Kenny had told him that government with the Independents would never work.

“Micheál Martin is lying,” said a high-ranking Fine Gael source. The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party gleefully threw out Kenny’s offer the following afternoon. A day of bitter accusation and countercharge followed.

But for all the public venting of ancestral prejudices, the two old enemies still knew that some sort of business would have to be done between them or another election would ensue.

Kitchen meeting

Martin asked Jim O’Callaghan, the newly elected TD who had been his legal adviser in opposition, to reach out. O’Callaghan called

Leo Varadkar

, who had been cultivating back channels to Fianna Fáil for weeks. At 8am last Saturday Varadkar was in O’Callaghan’s kitchen in Ranelagh, in south Dublin.

The acting Taoiseach’s most important policy adviser, Andrew McDowell, was also present, along with Martin’s chef de cabinet, Deirdre Gillane. The meeting was friendly and productive: a breakthrough at last.

Formal negotiations would begin between the two parties on Monday, they agreed. The agenda: how a minority government would work.

Several times on Monday, talks were nearly on, and then postponed. The negotiating teams from each party met that evening: O'Callaghan, Michael McGrath, Barry Cowen and Charlie McConalogue from Fianna Fáil, and Frances Fitzgerald, Varadkar, Paschal Donohue and Simon Coveney on the Fine Gael side.

Immediately there was a stumbling block. Fianna Fáil was insisting that if it was talking about backing a minority Fine Gael administration, then the larger party had to reciprocate: if Fianna Fáil won more support in the Dáil, Fine Gael would have to facilitate a minority administration led by Martin.

No, no, said the Fine Gael side. The discussions were about facilitating a Fine Gael-Independent minority government. Fianna Fáil brought up the subject constantly; again and again Fine Gael batted it away. The issue festered like a sore all week and remained unresolved.

The two sides did manage to agree a media blackout: no briefing journalists, no tales from inside the room. A joint statement described the meeting as cordial and constructive. It was stretching credibility.

When the sides reassembled the following day Fianna Fáil began to talk about a “framework agreement”, which would govern the relations between minority government and opposition.

Although publicly continuing to insist that it was still seeking to put together its own minority government, senior party figures privately acknowledged that they were talking about putative relations with a Fine Gael government.

“There’ll be certain demands, but we don’t envisage signing up to a programme for government,” said a senior Fianna Fáil source with knowledge of the talks.

“Our priorities will have to be included in the programme for government,” said another Fianna Fáil figure, “but we will be entitled to oppose the government and vote against certain elements of it.”

Fine Gael was confused: was Fianna Fáil in or out? “Fianna Fáil need to make up their minds,” complained one Fine Gael source. “What exactly is it that they want?”

His confusion was understandable. On the one hand Fianna Fáil was saying that its priorities would have to be included in any programme for government that a minority Fine Gael-Independent administration adopted. On the other hand it wanted to be able to oppose the programme. So which was it? “They’d have to be open to our suggestions,” shrugged one Fianna Fáiler. Some of the Fianna Fáil negotiators seemed unsure of what they were asking for themselves.

Actually, what Martin was thinking about was a different form of relationship between government and opposition. Government would cease to dominate parliament; instead it would have to secure consent for individual measures. Fianna Fáil would offer guarantees on “confidence and supply” measures. (The “supply” means money supply:the budget and related finance bills.)

Outside of those core areas it would be free to oppose the government on individual policies. The distinction between supporting a Fine Gael government and facilitating it might seem a fine one, but it was important to Fianna Fáil.

If Martin’s suggestion of a new form of government, outlined in speeches to the Dáil last week and in his speech in Tipperary last Sunday, was radical in an Irish context, it was commonplace in other countries where minority governments are regular features. He began to pepper his contributions with references to Scandinavia. But none of that buttered any parsnips in the talks with Fine Gael.

Martin also had to convince some of his own party. Some of them were (and remain) of the belief that a partnership government with Fine Gael is a sensible option, one that the party will come around to sooner or later anyway. So why not now?

Others feared that supporting a minority Fine Gael government would confer on them all the responsibilities of government but none of the political benefits. Fine Gael could see that prominent members of Fianna Fáil disagreed with Martin’s strategy.

Another Dáil vote

On Wednesday, as the talks entered their third day and with the deadline of another Dáil vote for taoiseach looming the following day, Fine Gael decided that it had to push things along. Kenny had the support of eight Independents, the team told Fianna Fail; Labour was ready to offer a confidence-and-supply arrangement. The numbers were overwhelming. It was time for Fianna Fáil to accept reality and make a deal.

But Barry Cowen and the rest of the Fianna Fáil team weren’t buying it. Who were these eight Independents? Could they produce them? Could they produce one of them?

In fact Fianna Fáil had been having its own contacts with the Independents during the week, which led it to believe that, actually, many of the Independents were leaning towards Martin.

One Fianna Fáil TD reported on Tuesday that all five of the “rural Independent” group were willing to vote for Martin. Others might follow. The Independents were whispering to anyone who would listen that Kenny was a big obstacle.

Actually, neither of the big parties quite trusted the Independents either. They guffawed privately at the Independents’ protestations that they were interested only in national issues – not least because the Independents were also quietly producing demands for their constituencies as the price for their support. Both of the big parties were – to put it mildly – sceptical that Independents would stay the course in government.

“They’re just not serious,” was a constant refrain from both sides.

One of the biggest doubters was the acting Taoiseach. That’s why he kept up his attempts to woo the Labour Party back into the government fold. They became more and more urgent as the week progressed.

For Martin’s part, he and his lieutenants were constantly being told by Independent TDs that they wanted to vote for him. When he tried to secure firm commitments, however, the support melted away.

Souring atmosphere

The uncertainty about Independent votes was beginning to poison the already testy atmosphere at the Fianna Fail-Fine Gael talks. A plan was mooted on Wednesday to postpone Thursday’s vote for a taoiseach, but as the atmosphere soured it was abandoned. It was the first sign to the outside world that the talks were coming off the tracks.

Fine Gael held a parliamentary-party meeting on Wednesday evening that passed an uncompromising motion on Irish Water – one of the key differences with Fianna Fáil. Martin’s team responded by cancelling a planned meeting to exchange policy papers.

Suddenly the media were reporting that the talks had collapsed. It wasn’t true, but it prompted Martin to give the Independents an ultimatum. They could vote for him, but only on Thursday. If he was defeated he would not seek to lead a government again. He had waited long enough for them to get off the fence: it was time to decide. They reacted badly.

On Thursday, after a febrile morning in Leinster House, with rumour suggesting everything from a surge towards Fianna Fáil to a dramatic intervention by Labour, the Independents did what they have done at every stage of this process when asked to make up their minds: they did nothing.

All except the Dublin South-West TD Katherine Zappone abstained on the vote for taoiseach; she broke for Kenny. Martin received no new votes. Fianna Fáil later issued a statement saying it would reopen talks with Fine Gael with a view to facilitating a minority government led by Enda Kenny.

Kenny now faces two tasks: he must strike a deal with Fianna Fáil on facilitating a minority government and he must get the votes from the Independents – or elsewhere – to make it work. A bare majority (with Fianna Fáil abstaining) is 58 votes. Kenny currently has 52.

He has work to do. Relations with Fianna Fáil are atrocious. The Independents are as mercurial as ever. Late on Thursday, after the vote and Martin’s public withdrawal from the race to form a government, a senior Fianna Fáiler received another overture from one of the Independents. If we can deliver all the votes, he asked, would ye reconsider?