ANALYSIS:Micheál Martin's call for change comes after 14 years in which his party seemed perfectly happy with the status quo, writes STEPHEN COLLINS
THE RESTRAINED launch of the Fianna Fáil manifesto yesterday was about as far as it was possible to get from the swagger that characterised the party’s election manifesto launches down the years.
The Treasury Building, the party’s haunt in recent elections, was too full of Celtic Tiger connotations (these days, it’s home to Nama as well as the NTMA) so it was abandoned for the more cultured surroundings of the Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square.
Party leader Micheál Martin was cool and composed and the manifesto itself had none of the excesses of “showtime” that characterised the past three election campaign launches presided over by Bertie Ahern.
Yet it was impossible for Martin to escape the legacy of those earlier election manifestos and the unrestrained boom they helped to fuel. No matter how hard he tried the new leader could not gloss over Fianna Fáil’s part in the country’s downfall.
“When I set out on this campaign less than a week ago I promised to be straight up and honest in this plan. We believe it is by far the most realistic plan to move Ireland forward. It is not the old political manifesto written with every group and interest in the electorate in mind,” said Martin.
He emphasised that there were no new spending commitments in the plan and no gimmicks. “And there are no poll-tested policy sound bites targeted at different sections of the population,” he declared, distancing himself from the party’s tried and trusted methods of election winning during the Ahern era.
The problem for Martin and Fianna Fáil is that they cannot escape their responsibility for so much of what went wrong. The manifesto attempted to shift some of the blame to Opposition demands for more spending and less taxation over the past decade but that will hardly wash with the public in this election campaign. Governments are elected to govern and Fianna Fáil has to take responsibility for its failures.
The first third of the manifesto, “Reviving the Economy and Restoring the Public Finances”, was a repackaging of the four-year plan devised under the scrutiny of the EU and IMF. While the Opposition parties have adopted stances that involve varying degrees of unreality in their rejection of the plan it seems that the voters are in no mood to listen to Fianna Fáil on the topic.
Martin focused on Labour leader Eamon Gilmore’s description of European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet as “a mere civil servant” and warned that the idea of “banging the table” and telling the ECB what to do was dangerous talk not grounded in reality.
In the longer term Martin is likely to be proven right but for the moment the electorate has a score to settle with Fianna Fáil and that is his problem.
His task is to hold enough seats in the election to ensure that the party comes back as a coherent opposition force. To that extent the manifesto was an important success because it gives Fianna Fáil a coherent position not only on the economy but on political reform.
At one level the political reform proposals were an obvious attempt by Fianna Fáil to shift the centre of debate away from the topic of the economy, on which the voters are so resistant to the party’s message, and on to one where they can be on the side of the angels.
Still, there is a lot of merit in the Fianna Fáil proposals and some originality as well. Others have suggested abolishing the Seanad and changing the electoral system but reforming the operations of government so that ministers no longer serve as constituency TDs and opening up government to non-politicians are brave suggestions.
A key element of the plan is that ministers on their appointment to cabinet will hand over their Dáil seats to an alternate who functions as a TD. Ministers will still be responsible to the Dáil for their actions but they will not be burdened with the normal chore of constituency work.
Martin, who as minister for foreign affairs and minister for enterprise saw at close hand how the demands of senior positions like this were incompatible with the work of a constituency TD, strongly defended the proposal. He pointed out that in most western democracies, apart from Britain, ministers do not have to be members of parliament.
This and other reforms, including changes in the electoral system to single-seat constituencies, allied to a list to keep it proportional, are serious ones that will require a lot of debate and ultimately a constitutional referendum.
As with the party’s economic policies the major criticism is that during 14 years in power Fianna Fáil did nothing to address the problem and it is a bit late now. Martin didn’t come up with a satisfactory answer when he was asked at the launch press conference why he never publicly supported his retiring colleague Noel Dempsey, who battled to get the cabinet to reform the electoral system and reduce the number of TDs.
For all that, the commitment to serious political reform is welcome. It may not win too many votes in this election, given the fact that according to last week’s Irish Times poll the voters don’t rate it as a very important issue, but it may be significant in the longer term as the entire political system struggles with the need for serious reform.
Fine Gael and the Labour Party published their own proposals on reform yesterday and the whole topic deserves serious treatment by the incoming government.
To their plans to abolish the Seanad, reduce the number of TDs and give them far more input into legislation, Fine Gael came up with proposals to cut the salaries and perks of politicians. One change aimed at embarrassing the current Government was an end to the ludicrously generous system of transition payments and pensions available to retiring ministers.
Martin made the fair point when asked about his own transition payments as an ex-minister that if money was the issue he would have been financially much better off not running again. Instead he has opted to lead his party in the most difficult possible set of circumstances.
Labour also came up with a plan for political reform. It is focused on making the Dáil work harder and longer and a constitutional convention to consider the future of the Seanad.
Whatever the outcome it looks as if the 31st Dáil will set about a serious look at reforming the way politicians conduct the nation’s business.
Stephen Collins is Political Editor