In the national interest, the architects of the new politics exercised their selfless minds, pooled their great thoughts and produced plans for a strong, stable government.
Solid foundations are a must, obviously, if this important new edifice of state is to last.
After many fraught meetings, the architects signed off on their depressing blueprint.
To avoid water damage and insulate political careers, the next government will be constructed on foundations of fudge.
Not a grand coalition, but a grand design. It’s the ideal building solution for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
One party (Fine Gael) needs somewhere to ditch its suddenly embarrassing principles on the issue of water charges and establishing a national water utility; the other (Fianna Fáil) needs somewhere to house its newly arrived sincerity on the question of not paying for water and a wardrobe to hang the clothes it nicked from Sinn Féin.
It matters not one damn to either party that the building they’ve just thrown up for the sake of convenience is entirely unsafe and likely to collapse and bury their electorate under a pile of expensive rubble.
That’s because the next government is not being constructed with those people in mind. Instead, it has become a vanity project for the two main parties whose members seem willing to buy any aul’ cowboy building off the plans because they are terrified of losing the roof over their heads.
That roof is Leinster House.
They fought long and hard to get their posteriors on the leather seats in the Dáil and don’t want an election under any circumstances because they mightn’t get back in.
Simple as. Never mind principles. Never mind the people who paid their water bills, or the people who believe there are far more urgent issues than water, or the people who want clean waterways and the overhauling of a decrepit infrastructure, or the people all over the country who have been shelling out for years for group water schemes and voting Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for just as long.
They’re just eejits.
Just like the TDs from Labour who lost their seats over the principle of paying for water, only to discover the people who urged them to spread the message have now decided that the only Principles they recognise is a ladies’ clothing chain.
“Self-interest over the national interest” is how Labour’s Brendan Howlin put it in the Dáil. The Minister for Public Expenditure was livid yesterday over what he clearly saw as Fine Gael’s betrayal of his party in pursuit of personal political gain.
All the high-minded talk about “suspending” the charges until God knows when was mere guff, a device to get Fine Gael back into government and Fianna Fáil straddling opposition and power. “On hold means finished and abandoned,” he thundered.
The right thing
Howlin was sad, recalling the start of the last government and “what Michael Noonan and I guaranteed to each other on the first day of holding our seals of office: to do the right thing even when it isn’t the easy thing. An election shouldn’t change that fundamental principle.”
His speech followed an angry one from Alan Kelly, Minister for the Environment. He accused his erstwhile Cabinet colleagues of “environmental treason”.
Labour – savaged by the voters for their stance on water, among other things – was hurt yesterday.
When Kelly rose to speak, not a single member of Fine Gael was in the chamber to hear him. Privately, many backbenchers are deeply unhappy at the deal put together by the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael negotiating teams. Over the past few days, backbenchers from both sides have been kept in the dark over the discussions. Some voiced their reservations during yesterday’s Dáil debate on Irish Water, but that was about it. They have seats to mind.
On the other hand, the politicians from the Anti-Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit were very pleased with themselves. And so they should have been. They were not the ones who did U-turns over Irish Water (Sinn Féin, muscling in on their territory, did) and they would have been forgiven had they turned a few somersaults when they saw the charges evaporating across the chamber floor yesterday.
They pronounced the water deal a direct outcome of people power and the mass protests over the charges.
Fine Gael’s Peter Fitzpatrick pointed out that in a poll taken after the general election, 8 per cent of voters said that the water charges were their main issue of concern: “It was not an issue on the doorstep.”
But it was a huge issue in the Dáil yesterday. It shouldn’t have been.
Bríd Smith of the AAA hailed the deal as a victory for the protesters.
Burkina Faso
“Wars have been and will be fought over water. It is not a commodity that can just be treated the same as any other. We can live for up to 70 days without food, as hunger strikers in the North and elsewhere have proved, but we cannot survive for more than three or five days without water,” she declared, as if we were living in Burkina Faso.
“That is the reason we must ensure it is publicly controlled and funded through progressive taxation, taxation that provides for the wealth to be shared.”
On which subject, the eloquent Mick Barry, a new AAA TD, had some thoughts. All it will take to improve the water system is €1 billion a year, he said.
“The money to do so is available. The Sunday Times Rich List published at the weekend showed that the richest 250 people in Ireland own €73 billion. A modest millionaire tax would be more than enough to cover this investment.”
Good luck with that.
It is hoped that the two main parties, with the help of Independents, will have a Fine Gael minority government in place by next Tuesday, with the support of Fianna Fáil.
And that’s all that matters. They’ll be in their house built on fudge.
Once the gable wall to their right is strong enough to withstand the buffeting wind from Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil is content to nibble away at the fudge, all the while undermining the foundations under Fine Gael.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael bags the posterity prize for Enda Kenny, who will get his wish to become the first leader of the party to be taoiseach in two consecutive governments, while sheltering their TDs from the trauma of another trip to the polls. And if the fudge holds up, they might get a few years out of the wheeze.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s concept design for the new politics is made entirely of glass – everyone can see through it. They don’t care if people look in and call them cynical. It shelters them from the water.
