Summer Holidays

Check this out also at The Irish Times site

It must be terribly hard for TDs and Senators. Being bundled like that out of the public eye for the whole summer. We all felt so sorry for them yesterday, to see them look so obviously glum and heavy-hearted as they nosed their BMWs out of the gates of Leinster House and headed off for ten weeks of idleness. They will be deprived of work and will have nothing to do to occupy thier time between now and September 24. It’s a hard station, we know. But (deep mournful intake of breath) it’s the life they have chosen.

My own first week working as a specialist political journalist was in August 2003. Arriving to work in Leinster House was like a GAA correspondent being assigned to Croke Park the Tuesday after an All Ireland football final. The political atmosphere was as spent as the PDs. We still had a paper to fill. It was thankless. Scrounging around for stories. Hoping that the odd TD playing golf at Playa de Nouveau Riche or at their Atlantic-hugging holiday home might have bothered to leave their mobiles on.

That autumn and the following spring a couple of the parties produced very impressive policy papers calling for Oireachtas reform. In the Senate, Mary O’Rourke was driving an all-party initiative to refrom that often entertaining, hugely interesting, but ultimately next-to-useless talking shop, the Seanad. It was great. And they kept on coming, the reform papers, throughout the period of the 29th Dáil. And how lovely they looked on the shelves. The same shelves already piled high with reform proposals for the 28th and the 27th and 26th Dáil…. ad infinitum.

Look at the Programme for Government. Look at the promises (included, the Greens say, at their insistence) to reform the Seanad and the Dáil. Note that a year has passed. Note that four years remain. Note that almost the exactly same promises will be contained in the next Programme for Government, for the 32st Dail whenever that might be.

This is not cynicism. It’s just stating a reality. A long time ago a Fine Gael TD Alice Glenn said that getting political parties to reduce the number of TDs and Senators would be like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. The first instinct of the political class is self-preservation. It is undeniable that the life is precarious. But the buffer zone they have created for itself is breath-takingly impressive. The Dáil sat for a total of 94 days in the 2007-2008 period. That total of sitting days has stayed unforgibably low (93 days in 2005; 96 in 2006 and 74 in the election year of 2007) despite promises each year to increase them. The House of Commons sits an average of 130 days each year. The US Congress is in session 160 days a year, almost twice as much as the Dáil. By the way, the Seanad sat on only 86 days in this political year.

The Oireachtas is also the legislature. A paltry total of 25 Bills have been passed since the Government returned a year ago. And some of these were standard bills that crop up every year like the Finance Bill, the Social Welfare Bill and the Motor Vehicle Duties Bill, all which give effect to budgetary changes. Some were necessary to give statutory effect in Ireland to European directives. Two of the bills corrected legal flaws in earlier bills. So we had the law-makers come up with a desolatory handfull of bills this year - the Immigration Bill, the Dublin Transportation Authority Bill, the Intoxicating Liquer Bill.

We don’t need to go into pay and expenses but the average basic salary for a TD is now well over €100,000. We have a total of 35 minister, 166 TDs and 60 Senators, pro rata way way more than any of our EU counterarts. And there are only two established Government backbenchers (Ned O’Keeffe and Jim McDaid) who don’t get some extra stipend for chairing or whipping committees.

Oh sorry, the committees sit during the summer, we are told. Erm, most of them will sit once, if that. That means that members (and they don’t all show up) have to come in one or two days during the summer just to show Joe Punter out there that it’s still ticking over, that the show is on the road.

Recession? What recession?

Say it Again Terence

The hapless Terence Flanagan has been exposed as a serial borrower of other people's speeches. This time round, when confronted with the 'evidence' by a Sunday newspaper journalist, he 'fessed up. As a rookie TD, it had been a 'steep learning curve'. From now on, he was going to talk 'on the hoof'.

I have seen Terence in action in the Dáil chamber and Edmund Burke, or Denis Skinner, or Joe Higgins... he is not. Even with a script his delivery is halting and his tone is as unchanging as a heart monitor attached to a rock. I also lived with him (vicariously of course) through the agonising listening experience of Terence Flanagan attempting to speak Irish (it was not pretty - though fair play to him for giving it a go).

The young Dublin North East TD should do what Fianna Fail backbenchers do - get the party's researchers to write the bulk of their stuff. Or maybe borrow some magic dust of Charlie O'Connor. No matter what subject or legislation or controversy is being debated in the Dáil Charlie sprinkles some magic dust on it and it turns into a speech about Tallaght. Maybe Terence could try a similar wheeze by getting Kilbarrack or Raheny to take their places among the nations o the earth.

And we journalists shouldn't scoff (yep, that's exactly what I was doing in the previous few pars). What do they say about journalist? Oh yes, it's the first page of tomorrow's fish and chip writing (you got a two-for-one bargain there in the metaphor department!) Journalists steal line, or borrow as we euphemise it, all the time. From other journalists. From other newspapers. Sometimes when two journalists are discussing the copy of a rival, they will dismiss the article as a 'clippings job' (the article is a mosaic that has culled the writing and wisdom of older articles on the internet).

But perhaps Terence is the symptom of the 30th Dail. Since the General Election a sense of listlessness and inertia has been evident. Sure there has been the odd conflagration (autism; the cancer misdiagnosis scandal) and of course the endless plot twists of the Bertie, Celia and the Drumcondra mafia soap opera has kept us all entertained. But beyond that, when it comes to the real business of the legislature and the executive you just feel that everything is in a kind of vast and endless holding pattern.

There has been a dearth of legislation. Even now, the new Bills are only trickling through. Talk of Dail and Seanad reform is as vague and vacant as it always has been - we will see herds of camels crossing the Polar tundra before meaningful reform of parliament takes place. And the Greens have come up with a couple of neat and worthy policies and promises. But we still await what we expect from the Greens - something vervy, something edgy, something radical, something that grabs you by the pin of your collar and shakes you out of any complacency or lethargy you might have. As for the rest of the Cabinet, none (especially Brian Cowen) seem inclined to step outside the comfort zone. They comport themselves like some kind of super executives or manager (some even use the excruciatingly ugly phrase 'Ireland plc) and just let everything tick along nicely.

There are exceptions. Noel Dempsey has lots of ideas - and most of them are surprisingly good. Then there was Micheál and the smoking ban. Will that become for him what 'Yesterday' became for Paul McCartney - John Lennon mocked his former writing partner for having composed only one memorable song. And Brian Cowen? He makes Ken Baldwin from Coronation Street look like a thrilling daredevil.

Well if Twink is packing them in up at the Tivoli with Menopause the Musical then the Anorak is equally capable of drawing a crowd at Dublin Castle with Man Opposing the Tribunal (sorry, sorry, sorry - it's brutal I know). The awful thought struck me yesterday. If Bertie goes as quickly as we all predict he will, we will have nothing to write about. They're all so bored with it (and boring as a result) that it's not only Terence who's repeating himself over and over again with borrowed words and ideas.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE BURNING ISSUE

This is my Irish Examiner column from this weekend...


WHEN I was a child growing up in suburban Galway in the late 1970s and early 1980s, disposing of our waste was a relatively simple matter.


The mindset back then was encapsulated by the catchy slogan of one of the private waste disposal companies: “Let O’Brien do the shifting”.

You threw the lot out. Except for milk bottles, which you left out each morning, and soft drink bottles for which you got a tiny deposit back.

But everything else went out to a dump in Carrowbrowne in the north of the city. And by everything I mean everything.




I remember my father loading up an old fridge on a trailer and us making the journey out the Headford Road to dump it at the tiphead.

Even then, like the milk bottles, there was a form of recycling taking place as Travellers made a living by sifting through the rubbish for copper, other metals and reusables.

The mindset changed in Galway during the late 1990s when the city went mad for recycling. Every time I made the trip home, members of my family seemed to have added yet another for-recycling container to the dolly mixture of bins outside the front door. Where Galway led, everyone else has followed since then, except for Carlow and Mayo.

The latest figures, released in August this year, showed that both counties had shamefully low recycling rates of less than 7% each in 2005.

By contrast, Galway city’s rate for 2005 was an impressive 47%.

Dublin city lagged behind at 13%.

Best of all was Longford with 57%.

The good news about the sea- change is that the recycling target of 35% set for 2012 has already been surpassed. And so it is likely that the new recycling target for 2012 of 50% will be achieved.

That means that of the projected 3.4 million tonnes of waste that is projected to be generated in 2012, only half, or 1.7m tonnes, will go onto the next stage of the process.

There is bad news though and it also applies to another shift of culture.

During the 1990s — when it became increasingly apparent that landfills and super-dumps were no longer sustainable — the Fianna Fáil-led government began casting around for alternatives.

They looked to Europe and what they saw was incineration.

The current national waste strategy set out ambitious plans for eight regional thermal treatment plants around the country.

Now there has been another fundamental change of mindset and that has coincided with the Greens arriving in government for the first time.

In opposition, the party was a fierce opponent of incineration, and I think it’s fair to say that John Gormley’s opposition was given an added intensity by the fact that the biggest facility of them all was earmarked for Poolbeg, the visual focal point of his own constituency.

The political headache for the Green Party is that the new political shift has arrived too late — nine years too late by most estimates. No matter how gargantuan his efforts, no matter how persuasive his arguments, no matter how potent his promise, time is not on Gormley’s side.

For a worryingly high number of their core issues, the Greens arrived minutes too late — the train had already left the station.

Within a short time of arriving at the Department of Environment, Gormley flurried into a series of different actions. He commissioned a review of the national waste strategy and a new one may see the light of day by early autumn of next year.

He also parlayed up the Programme on Government’s commitments in relation to waste management. If you look at the document that was brokered between FF and the Greens, you will see all the key phrases. The three Rs (reduction, re-use and recycling) would be cornerstones and for the first time there was a concrete commitment to the introduction of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) facilities.

Gormley took this and ran with it, as was his right as Greens’ leader and as Minister for the Environment.

He made a presentation to Cabinet and afterwards was emboldened to proclaim that incineration was no longer the cornerstone of Irish waste policy.

The assessment wasn’t exactly shared by Fianna Fáil or by Bertie Ahern, who has conceded we may have four or more incinerators.

Then in October, Gormley got experts within his department to estimate the amount of residual waste that would be left for incineration if recycling was at 50% and if MBT was fully operational.

The figures were startling.

Out of total municipal waste of 3.4m tonnes a year in 2012, you could whittle the incineration-only stuff down to a mere 400,000 tonnes.

Suddenly, we no longer need eight incinerators; no more than two.

The problem is that it has come too late in the day.

An Bord Pleanála said it could only rely on the written and extant policy and existing laws. It granted planning permission to Poolbeg. And within days, the Environmental Protection Agency granted it a licence, albeit with 109 conditions.

Despite this latest sea-change, despite MBT coming on stream, despite higher recycling rates, incineration is a reality that the Greens can only fight a fierce rearguard battle against.

Already it’s certain that four will come on stream — in Co Meath, Poolbeg and the twin burners in Ringaskiddy.

And unfortunately for them, the Greens’ continuing campaign against them may be as futile as Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills.

INSIDE POLITICS - PAYBACK TIME

Is it going to be payback time, literally? Bertie Ahern doesn't want to forfeit the extra 38 grand. But a couple of Ministers have been sounding a little peevish and watery about getting another massive rake of cash on top of all the perks, money and extras they have got over recent years.

And it's not just the politicians. It's the entire top brass.Secretaries General (Grade 1) of Government Department will all be getting €303,000, as will Supreme Court Judges, CEOs of semi states, with a whole second tier of judges, technocrats, Semi State bods, university heads getting humongous wage levels. The plain truth is that we are more prosperous now but STILL a small country, and such largess is unjustified. An independent body it may technically be but it is composed mostly of very wealthy people from the private sector - there is one workers' representative from the Labour Court. For them big six figure salaries are (excuse the mixed metaphor) ten a penny.

And what's galling is that they are all entitled to gold-plated pensions that are inured to the winds of change. And secretary generals will also be entitled to bonuses up to 20% of their salaries for 'exceptional' performance, whatever that is. And will they get docked pay for making a blunder or for under-perforimg? Umm, I thing we have a negative on that one!

Eamon Ryan didn't do well this morning under a fusillade of questions from Cathal Mac Coille on Morning Ireland (hear the interview here). And the rumour is that the Cabinet is now going to indulge in a bit of tokenism and defer the pay rise for a couple of months, and then reintroduce it when the furore has died down.

Sadly, I wouldn't expect any of the opposition parties to do any better. The greed at the top reflects wider society. Who's going to protest about it? No politician will, that's for sure! Who else? The vested interests involved are the most powerful in the country! Who has the will and the wherewithal to do it? Anybody who has is going to be way outside the golden circle.

There are sectors in Irish society where salaries are vastly inflated. Executive pay in business is crass. Barristers and consultants at the top of their professions command obscene fees that are grotesquely out of proportion with Ireland's size and position in the world (for reference, return to home truth speech made by the German Ambassador to Ireland). And no matter how consultants try to dress it up, one of their number did described a €200,000 plus salary as "Mickey Mouse money".

I'll just finish by quoting two paragraphs from Polly Toynbee's excellent column in the Guardian last Tuesday on pay profligacy (being Toynbee, they are two very long paragraphs!.

Out of control top pay in the private sector should matter to the Treasury because it infects the public sector. Why is the cabinet secretary now paid considerably more (£220,000) than the prime minister (£187,000)? It's a plum prestige job that needs no bribery, and leads to rich jobs afterwards. Does the chief executive of Bradford need more than the PM? Bringing private sector people in now infects public pay scales, as lower ranking arrivals on £300,000 report to permanent secretaries on £170,000. (However there is plainly a rare genuine market for head of the nuclear decommissioning authority: no one applied for this toxic chalice at £80,000 so it's now been advertised at £200,000). But being director general of the BBC is not toxic: everyone wants it, so why pay a total package of £788,000 - let alone cabinet minister rates for scores of middling BBC managers? (And couldn't they take a pay cut in sympathy with those about to lose their jobs?) Sir John Bourn's downfall is a classic example of how private excess makes public people lose their financial bearings.
For Labour to refuse to give any leadership on this is an incomprehensible lacuna: the national psychology of pay affects everyone. Yesterday the government set up a new child poverty unit: Ed Balls and Peter Hain, the two ministers involved, know their 2010 half-way mark to abolishing child poverty will be missed by miles on its present trajectory. Barnardo's are joining in - but their director, Martin Narey, wonders what they can do with no extra money. Only 48p a week extra went to child tax credits this year, subsidising low-paid jobs. The bigger question is this: how can Labour ever abolish child poverty if they dare not face down the underlying forces fracturing pay scales all the way through and accelerating the country into ever greater inequality?

The selfsame argument can be made in Ireland.

INSIDE POLITICS - THAT OPINION POLL

The latest opinion poll tells us that Fianna Fail is on the way out and if we are patient enough to wait out the other 1,500 days between now and the next General Election, we can collectively wave them goodbye.

In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.

Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).

It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.

It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.

There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.

When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.

The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.

Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.

A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).

So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.

A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.

But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.

I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.

Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.

INSIDE POLITICS - NO BRAINER OF THE WEEK

Some weeks you find yourself scratching around for fodder for the weekend column. Mostly it goes something like this: what the hell am I going to write about this week? Should I gratuitously attack The Anorak for no good reason again (that's a joke by the way)or do another organ-grind of my favourite gripe that there are too many of them; that they're all over-paid; and that as our State has evolved, their main function has increasingly become to look after their own interests. There's an actual committee (chairman gets paid an extra 20 grand) called 'Members' Interests'. That for me says it all!

But not this week, like manna from Heaven, like the fatted calf for the prodigal son, like the loaves and the fish, the Irish Times opinion poll landed on our laps this morning.

Sure, there are only 1,500 shopping days or so until the Next Election. But this was telling in its own way.

The figures have been parsed elsewhere this morning (see the Irish Times main article here) Polls are crude instruments of measure at the best of times. What they are very good at doing though is recording big falls and big rises of support for the main parties.
So the rises for Fine Gael (+4) and Labour (+5) are significant as is the whopping nine point drop for FF.

The reasons for this: the debacle over provisional driving licences; the cynical pay rises they all accepted last week; and a first public verdict on Bertie Ahern's extraordinary account of his dabblings in international monetary exchanges.

The most interesting thing is that Ahern's own stock has fallen sharply. And what complicates this is that the Times decided to include the anointed one, Brian Cowen, in among the leaders for the first time. I spoke to a FF insider for whom I have a lot of respect last night who said that he was suspicious of the Times's motives in including Cowen and that it was deliberately throwing a cat among the pigeons.

But that's not really fair. Cowen is widely accepted as the heir to the throne and it's always good to get the public verdict on his performance.

The Greens? Holding up. Gormley will will be happy with his rating. 5% is what they got in the election. Their support rose up to near 10% on a couple of occasions but ultimately that was meaningless.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREENS MEANS COMPROMISE

Well, as the saying goes, you say tomato, I say total and abject capitulation.

Us political hacks were roused out of mid-afternoon somnolence yesterday to be told that John Gormley and Brian Lenihan would be over to brief us on something significant.

And what was it? A new proposal to legislate for civil partnerships.

If you weren't as hard bitten and cynical as us, you would say: great. That's a fantastic breakthrough.

But there's a fly in the ointment!

And it's this:

Last February, the Labour Party tabled a Bill that would make civil unions between homosexual couples legal.

The Green Party enthusiastically endorsed it, with its justice spokesperson Ciaran Cuffe backing it to the hilt (listen to Cuffe's interview on Morning Ireland here)

In fairness to them the Greens also got a commitment into the Programme for Government. But the more hesitant FFers insisted that the phraseology be civil partnership rather than civil union.

The difference is important. A civil partnership can never be considered the equivalent of gay marriage - it will never be on a part with heterosexual marriage will will retain its preeminence in the Constitution.

Civil partnership is certainly a massive improvement on what we have at present. It will allow the legal rights of partners to be recognised by law (including succession rights and a possible share of assets). Forms of life partnerships other than homosexual ones will also be recognised.

But the manner in which it was all rushed through last night smacked of a little panic (though Green handlers were blue in the face last night saying that the party's programme manager Donal Geoghegan has been working on it since last September).

Tactically, it was a clever little move by the Labour Party. By retabling a motion that the Greens backed so solidly last February, they were calling the junior coalition party's bluff.

Would the Greens have to vote against a Bill they backed only last February and face more embarrassing taunts of sell-out and capitulation?

Did they have any choice but to pressure the senior partners to come up with something that would give them comfort?

The Government's own proposals (yep, they have been working on it since last September) were delivered orally by Brian Lenihan and John Gormley and were so vague that two words came to mind. One was 'back'. The other was 'envelope'. Heads of Bill by next March. Legislation by the end of this term. Proposals saying they would take account of the plethora of reports that have been produced in recent years.

All it was was a reiteration of the Programme for Government commitment with a couple of bells and whistles.

You need to be careful about the optics. This will be perceived as a reactive measure rather than something they came out with themselves. The Greens can't always be responding. They need to begin to assert their own agendas.

Otherwise it's going to pan out as a series of ass-saving exercises.

INSIDE POLITICS - AND SOON TO BE (KIND OF OUTSIDE)

From time to time, I've written about where we political correspondents are billeted in Leinster House. We are right at the top of the old Georgain building (the main one), on the second floor. The Irish Examiner shares a small crickety room overlooking Merrion Square with the Sunday Times, The Sunday Business Post, and the irrepressible and irascible John Lee of the Irish Daily Mail. They were once servants' quarters which means they have gone very low-rent since then.

During the summer, when nothing happens, I have often compared where we are to the Overlook Hotel. That is the remote and isolated hotel in the horror film, The Shining. Sometimes during the recess it's so quiet that the only thing that livens up the day is the hourly roar from the Vikings on the Splash tour passing on nearby Merrion Square.

Well, we were all dealt a severe blow earlier this week. We were told that we had to get out of the room and within days. No it wasn't the ShannonGate story we broke this week. It was the floor. Apparently, it's a suspended floor that was hung off the rafters sometime in the middle of the 19th century. And 150 years of more of occupaton by well-fed and self-satisfied people has made one of the beams sag to a dangerous extent.

And so, there was nothing for it but to evacuate. Today is a sad day for us because we are clearing the office, with all its shabby and fading charm. We are being relocated to a modern and functional office in Setanta House near the Kilkenny centre. It's only three minutes away from Leinster House but it feels like an aeon away. As we looked at it today, we all that the dread feeling that sitting over there we are definitely going to be out of the loop.

But there's nothing we can do about it except grin and bear it. It will keep us relatively fit as we'll have to sprint back and forth for briefings and for whatever bit of crumbs we can get from chit-chat meetings on the corridors of power!

Civil servants have resisted. But unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, we have been decentralised.

Ok, we're still here for the last day but there's nothing much to report. The Greens will be voting in their chairperson this evening. Dan Boyle looks the favourite but there's a slight anti-establishmentarian wing in the party that want to keep the pro-Government majority in check. And I expect Bronwyn Maher to do well, though Boyle must be odds-on favourite.

Elsewhere, Bertie is giving his annual Bodenstown speech next Sunday. That's always a curious and quaint affair - men in felt hats, a lone bugle, and a Bertie speech that doesn't mention how lucky we have been to have him as Taoiseach for the past ten years.

In fact, the quality of speech at Bodenstown is always very good... so good in fact that sometimes you could imagine it could be de Valera delivering it!

INSIDE POLITICS - TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR THIS GOVERNMENT

THERE are four years, eight months and six days left until the next general election.


That means only one thing — the Government has left it too late to save their skins. They are toast already.

Ah yes, you say. A resurgent Fine Gael will become even more resurgent and will wipe the floor with them. Ermmm, no.

By the way they are shaping up so far, Fine Gael look like they will be merely spectators to the Government’s demise. I was speaking to a senior Fine Gael backroom person during the week and asked him about the state of play of its strategic planning for the next five years.




The answer I got was that there isn’t a strategy, not yet. The reasons?

It’s only a couple of months since a tough election. The new front bench needs to bed itself in. Give it a bit of time.

It was — and I didn’t quibble — a reasonable explanation. But it was also wrong.

Just as a week can be a long time in politics, a five-year term can be a short time in politics. And we have seen a couple of examples in the past week of Fine Gael spokespeopleopposing just for the sake of opposing and offering no cohesive or original proposals of its own (and before you correct me, the otherwise smart Charlie Flanagan’s suggestion to call in the army was not original).

And so in the new Dáil term, we have seen FG take up where it left off before the election. We don’t know if it’s still relying on the three pillars on which it fought the election campaign — health, crime and value for money — but it seems to be. And that’s a mistake.

There’s a school of thought within FG that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it — continue with the strategy that won it 20 seats and sure, won’t it yield even more?

A couple of weeks ago, FG’s young blade Leo Varadkar wrote in a posh newspaper arguing that far from trumpeting its success, FG should be flagellating itself for failing to win the election.

The campaign (ie the superficial razzmatazz) was professional, but wasn’t enough. “We did not win the policy debates. We showed an unwillingness to take clear positions. We did not demonstrate competence to run the economy.”

As an example, he said, the party, by concentrating on the narrow issue of stamp duty (pandering to a skewed and perverse Sunday Independent campaign), abandoned imaginative plans for a 30% income tax for middle earners. To that end, they could learn from the flair that Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has shown in terms of policy and presentation.

Mr Varadkar’s argument that Fine Gael “will have to look like modern Ireland” sounds like it comes straight out of David Cameron’s rulebook.

FG needs to do all of those things. But already, it’s beginning to look like it might not need to bother. The PDs already look like goners. There’s no dynamic for change within FF, which means that Brian Cowen and others will bide their time even if Bertie Ahern stays on until 2011.

If that happens, whoever succeeds him will be leading Fianna Fáil into opposition.

And the Green Party? The incinerator debate this week underlined the innate weakness of its position in Government. The media and opposition honed in not on John Gormley’s argument that Ireland will need two rather than eight incinerators, but on his tacit acceptance that incinerators will be needed in the first place. That’s a big concession.

Its biggest enemy will be time. In the Programme for Government, the Greens got a commitment to an international review of national waste policy. And it’s been agreed. That’s fine. But it won’t be completed until 2009. And by the time they’ve gone through the hoops of approval, procurement and delivery, it will be — well, way beyond 2012.

And with an economy beginning to feel the squeeze, its own big flagship issues — the annual 3% reduction in carbon emissions; the big push towards renewable and alternative forms of energy — will encounter resistance from FF ministers.

The Greens know that FF has red lines and is not prepared to cross them. So many of what the Greens want is predicated on reviews, reports, promises and vague aspirations (stuff that can be kicked into the blue yonder). Green ministers and their advisers are still talking naively about how nice FF ministers have been to them. But in technical terms that’s called a honeymoon period.

If they don’t start picking a couple of fights with the Big Beasts of FF soon, they’ll find themselves with nothing tangible to show. There are four years, eight months and five days left. But if they don’t start moving, it will be too late.

INSIDE POLITICS - OPPOSITION STRATEGY

At the end of every term, I do a simple exercise, totting up the topics that have been chosen by opposition leaders for the twice-weekly set piece Leaders' Questions.

Over the last couple of years, the predictable issues have dominated - health, crime, and the Government's secret weapon of dealing with Limerick's gang culture: unleashing Willie O'Dea in the city's drinking establishment on weekend nights.

The dynamic has changed this time. There are now only two leaders entitled to speak during Leaders Questions and one of them, Eamon Gilmore, is new. With the smaller parties and indepedendents having been hoovered up by Government or gobbled up by the electorate, there is no longer a technical group. There is no Joe Higgins. The Greens have forsaken tofu abstinence for meat indulgence. And Sinn Fein - this was meant to be another breakthrough election; it instead became a breakdown election. Down from five to four. No Mary Lou. Pearse Doherty in the Senate rather than in the Dáil.

So where once there were five, now there are two. It's very early days and I don't think that any of the opposition parties have got their heads around what strategies they will adopt to down the Government over the next five years.

With Labour's Gilmore, there has been a difference of style and nuance rather than substance so far - he is less confrontational; appealing more to reason and to common sense than Rabbitte was. For Enda Kenny and Fine Gael, it's been more of the same, leaving off where they left off before the election.

Fine Gael's big strategy last time was that the election would be won or lost on three big issues - health, crime and value for money. The party was wrong on all three issues. The election was won and lost on the economy.

So can we expect more PPARS, more attacks on health, more 'we are tougher than Terminator' on getting the criminal gang scum off the streets.

Well on the crime front, yes. Listening to Enda Kenny and Charlie Flanagan yesterday, it was deja vu all over again. Kenny repeated a phrase three times: "Who's in charge Taoiseach, the Government or the gangs?"

That had tabloid written all over it. But when Charlie Flanagan started talking about bringing the army onto the street as back-up, that really took the pip. Brian Lenihan should have dismissed it out of hand. Instead, foolishly, the Justice Minister actually said he would refer it to the Garda Commissioner. I mean, if you follow that line of argument, the next thing is that we will impose martial law on the street and people will begin to consider the sense of Eoghan Harris's baublings about armed gardai shooting it out with criminals and the return of capital punishment.

Nobody actually openly accused Bertie Ahern of lying yesterday. But if you were to look up a thesaurus, you’d find that just about every possible alternative word for ‘lie’ was used by Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore when describing the Taoiseach’s evidence to the Mahon Tribunal.

There is a basic rule in the Dáil. The ‘L’ word may never be uttered. In the past, we have seen some creative words and phrases being employed: dissembling; misleading the Dail; untruth; ‘being economical with the truth’.

But yesterday was of a different order. The L word was never uttered. But during the motion of confidence – and let’s make no mistake about – it was clearly meant. There was to be no softening of the blows. To all intents and purposes – but without every actually saying so – Kenny and Gilmore accused the Taoiseach of lying and lying and lying again.

During a heated, angry and self-evidently bitter debate on the motion of confidence in the Taoiseach – the first motion brought since one against Albert Reynolds in November 1994 – Ahern found himself being accused of giving incredible accounts, of fabricating, of not being credible, of creating smoke screens, of gelling bizarre and shifting tales. And all of this was said under oath, during his 18 hours of evidence to the Tribunal.

The charges that Kenny and Gilmore laid were far more serious, far graver than most of us had anticipated. Not alone did they accuse him of the L word. They claimed that most of the events that he has based his entire defence on never took place. They contended that events recalled by Ahern in interviews and under oath to the Tribunal – the famous Manchester dinner, the dig-out from friends, the Michael Wall payment, the purchase of £30,000 sterling – never took place.

This was the core of Kenny’s argument in one of the best speeches he has made since he becoming leder: “Most of the events we were discussing never happened. In my view, in my opinion, they’re fictitious. Complicated stories, part of a web of complicated stories designed to mask hard facts. Constructed stories to fit known facts.”
Phew! That was strong stuff and potentially as corrosive as sulphuric acid. And though he didn’t say it either, what Kenny also suggested that Ahern was on the take when he lodged amounts between 1993 and 1995 that equated to €300,000 in today’s terms.

“We have heard no credible explanation from the Taoiseach for these lodgements. In the absence of such an explanation the deep suspicion must remain that these lodgements were a result of personal contributions made to the Taoiseach.”
And in a speech designed to – and which probably did – get under Ahern’s craw, Kenny quoted lines from Des O’Malley (“I stand by the Republic”) and Jack Lynch (“we cannot stand idly by”) to make unfavourable comparisons to Ahern. He also quoted from Charlie Haughey to make even more unfavourable comparisons.

Gilmore, making his maiden speech as the new Labour leader, went over the same ground. He recalled the Taoiseach recalling next to nothing about the dinner in Manchester and then pointed out that Ahern claimed on the Late Late Show in 1998 that one of his best attributes was a good memory.”

His recurring theme – in a speech that was serious and under-stated - was that he did not believe Ahern, that the Taoiseach was making up cock and bull stories.

“I don’t believe him. Most of his own deputies don’t believe him and the public clearly doesn’t’ believe him either,” was a phrase that was uttered more than once.
And this is Taoiseach’s big quandary. There’s a serious credibility problem there that can’t be explained by unusual circumstances or his marriage break-down or by what he described as his ‘unorthodox affairs’ during his marital separation in the 1990s.

Yesterday he again urged people to read the 18 hours of transcript. But anyone who reads it will be no clearer about all those information and credibility gaps. If anything they will be bewildered and more confused.

He – and all his Ministers who spoke – also argued that there was not a scintilla of proof to back up the central allegation made by Tom Gilmartin that he took payments from Owen O’Callaghan.

Joe Higgins was spot-on last week when describing the use of this particular blatant diversionary tactic. Higgins gloriously employed a famous Bertie-ism to describe Bertie dragging Owen O'Callaghan and Tom Gilmartin in:

“It’s throwing red herrings at white elephants.”

But it’s not about Tom Gilmartin any more. It’s about all these odd transactions, all these unremembered and half-remembered sterling and Irish sums passing through accounts controlled by him. And why his explanation of them is of the ‘the dog has eaten my homework’ type.

He was effective in pointing out the belated courage of both Fine Gael and Labour in going for his political jugular. “One day they blow hot and the next day they blow cold. Last May to them due process was an excuse not to comment but today, political accountability is the pretext for their questioning.”

He repeated his defence against allegations made in the Tribunal, rebutting allegations that he had delayed or not cooperated or dissembled. But it’s all a bit conditional. He said he waived confidentiality on bank documents and consented to the Tribunal obtaining discovery against AIB. But he forgot to mention yesterday that he only did so when forced to by the opposition.

And as for changing his evidence he asserted: “The fundamental of my evidence have remained the same. I have added some detail and elaborated in some areas for reasons which I shall explain…. It is a matter of reality that one’s recollection can be helped as new information comes to light.”

And in a day where little love was lost, where both sides strongly signalled that the 30th Dail will be a tenser, colder House, he accused his political foes of “stretching the available evidence with malign invention.”

The thrust of the Government defence, put most passionately by Tánaiste Brian Cowen in the closing speech (and boy does he sound like leader-designate) the opposition were hypocrites in that they had only discovered high standards and morality after the election, where before polling day they back-pedalled from BertieGate more quickly than a professional cyclist on dope.

“I know right from wrong. And the Tribunal will be the arbitrer. If we are to avoid arbitrary justice let the Tribunal proceed with its deliberations.”
Ahern sat through it all, uncomfortably. It’s clear he finds it all, as he said in his speech, unseemly and intrusive. For him once no evidence is adduced of payments from Owen O’Callaghan, the rest is nobody’s business. The payments were, as he put it, being “assisted by friends”. In his moral compass, he did nothing wrong. He made a big deal of paying back €100,000 but he only did that when he had to (in 2006), when the outing of the payments last year forced him to do that.

And if he was uncomfortable, the Greens seemed to be squirming in their seats. Trevor Sargent, Eamon Ryan, Ciaran Cuffe and Mareey White didn’t clap at the end of Ahern’s speech as the loyal FFers did, but we were later told that nothing turned on that. The opposition reminded the party of how quickly it had rolled down from the high moral ground into the swamp. Trevor Sargents excoriations of FF in the run-up to the election campaign were recalled. And when John Gormley finally made an appearance in the chamber shortly after 8pm, he said little more than he would wait until the Tribunal reported. He then resorted to the magician’s trick of misdirection by reciting Green policy objectives in Government. There are times to talk about climate change but last nights was not one of them.

The L word was never used. They didn’t have to. This was the most serious attack Ahern faced in 30 years of politics. Strategically, the Government banked completely on the Tribunal report. When it does report (will it be next year or 2009?) if it criticises him to any serious extent, he will be a goner. One senior Green Party person thought privately that it might be as soon as the Christmas break.

We have all gone through the disconnect between the media and Joe Schmo out there. But no matter how you look at this one, Bertie Ahern has been damaged.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE LONG GOODBYE

Sometime late last night – or even today in a summit that was tediously snailing its way to either success or failure– two of the Europe’s longest-standing leaders interrupted their colleagues to make a joint statement in the wrapping-it-up part.

Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair told the other 25 prime ministers that the neverending bush fire that had been Northern Ireland’s political situation had been quenched, doused, and finally brought under control.

This peace unlike all the previous ceasefires and agreements was permanent, forever. With the earlier attempts, violent or trouble invariably returned like a raging fire jumping across a road or a track or a fire-break.

Okay, they didn’t phrase it like that. European Council summits tend to be sticklers for formality. But the net point was this. Following the ceremonies at Stormont and Westminster, this was the final, really final, occasion in which both leaders could do another lap of honour – point to the one great and historical legacy of their close decade-long political partnership.

Next Friday on June 29th Tony Blair resigns after the longest long goodbye in political history. Over the last year, and particularly in the last few months, we have seen him do all the valedictory stuff, his farewell tour– the visit to Iraq, the gradual ceding of power to Gordon Brown, the emotional goodbye in his Sedgefield constituency, the extraordinary day in Stormont (and peace in the North will probably be Blair’s greatest legacy).

But almost un-noticed (in fact not noticed at all) another political career has reached its high water mark and is now beginning to slowly ebb. For the moment that Bertie Ahern grasped a third election in a row, was the moment when he started letting go. To be sure, the anorak braved ferocious elements in its time. But its surprising sturdiness at withstanding everything thrown at it cannot disguise its obsolescence.

Anyone who tracked Blair’s career will know of his near obsession with legacy – his sometimes barmy ideas to ensure that he would be remembered by posterity. Iraq is Iraq. No more needs to be said about that shameful escapade. On the other end of the scale is Northern Ireland, an unqualified success story. In between there are failures (the Millennium Dome), successes (the London Olympics in 2012), as well as a mixed bag of half-completed or half-abandoned ‘reforms’.

And in anointing Brian Cowen as the chosen one last week, Ahern was finally acknowledging his own mortality. His legacy will be a little less tangible. It could have been the National Stadium but that fell asunder. Historically, it will be the North. And generally, it will find expression in the simple language he himself used at a Fianna Fail Ard Fheis a couple of years ago of wanting a “better Ireland”.

Materially at least – and the thumping FF consolidation in the last election was proof of this – that he has achieved. There was a time when TDs from all political parties drove Opel Vectras or VW Passats. Now most drive gleaming big Mercs and BMWs. And like their politicians, the swathe of Irish people that matter (ie those who are not too poor to vote) have all traded-up their lifestyles in ten years.

In the past week, there have been more theories about why Bertie named Cowen as anorak-elect than there are about the whereabouts of Lord Lucan. The problem with a man who made confusion into an art form is that even when he makes a straight statement people read convolution and confusion into it.

Some have pointed out that Cowen and Ahern are not the close friends as the Taoiseach paints it (that’s true). They also say that Cowen doesn’t need Ahern’s imprimatur (that’s true). Some people have suggested that it will give Cowen no help at all, that by naming him that Ahern has performed some unspeakable Machiavellian act. And its net effect is that ht has actually undermined him. (that’s very not true).

But a surprising number of people have said that to me this week as if it were Gospel. To them, I’ve replied: ‘I hear what you are saying’ which is a great euphemism for bunkum and piffle.

For once, let’s assume Ahern was telling it straight. Cowen is his natural successor. Maybe Ahern was also giving public confirmation in a roundabout way that he will not last until he’s 60 (that’s a political eon away in September 2011). Perhaps too he was giving Cowen fair warning that he needs to start to step up his preparations to take on the challenge – or more importantly to take on the challengers, including Micheal Martin, Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin and Noel Dempsey.

Ahern has an ability to see around corners. He saw off Sinn Fein in the election (actually somebody described Michael McDowell as the jihadist of the campaign – in destroying Sinn Fein’s chances he also completely destroyed his own). He had the foresight to bring in the Greens, not just for numbers but as a means of winning the 2012 election.

And maybe too he is looking at the future and seeing a long-standing Fianna Fail tradition which was wholly absent during his reign making an unwelcome return. And that’s the Fianna Fail of splits and personality clashes, leadership heaves and bad blood.

And maybe he’s saying that the only way of removing that element of uncertainty is by making sure that a strong Putin-like leader replaces him.

This column appeared in today's Irish Examiner

INSIDE POLITICS - THE NEW GOVERNMENT REVEALED

Bertie Ahern was amazingly conservative in his appointment of ministers. He never had the sanguine nature to do the slashing job that Albert Reynolds did when he became Taoiseach.

Bertie's method is an effective one. He is not into invasive surgery. When things had to change in 2004 he did so with a minimum of fuss. Charlie McCreevy was booted upstairs. Joe Walsh and Michael Smith were finally given their walking papers. And that allowed him to bring in three.

The same kind of compositional creatity was used this time around. He offered John O'Donoghue the Ceann Comhairle position. He could have done a bit more tinkering and appointed Brian Lenihan as Attorney General (there is no bar for a politician to become A-G). In the event Dick Roche got the flick to accommoddate John Gormley and Eamon Ryan.

Whatever deficiencies there were for the Greens in the draft programme for government, they partly made up by getting two plum ministries, both of which feed strongly into the green agenda.

And for those who had to be shifted, the big winners were the negotiators. Noel Dempsey moves to Transport and Marine; Seamus Brennan parlayed his way into a position that he became indispensable - Bertie just couldn't drop him after his starring role over the past six weeks. And for Brian Cowen, his position as the 'annointed' was confirmed by him becoming the first Tanaiste since John Wilson.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE NEW GOVERNMETN

It's going to be an amazing day. A new Dail. A new Government. The protocol and procedures. Ciaran Cuffe's interview on Morning Ireland this morning with his admission that there will be constant tension set the tone. We will have interesting times ahead. The Greens will have to perform strongly as Ministers though to make up for the Green shortfall in a programme for government that is indistinguishable (almost) from the FF manifesto.

Last night's overwhelming yea to Government by the Greens last night was equally amazing. It was highly emotional; a coming-of-age for a political party. The 87% backing for the leadership was extraordinary.

And Trevor Sargent's decision to resign showed a rare display of honour amongst the band of thieves that is the political class and the hacks that write and talk about them. That he was not only stepping down but also forfeiting a ministerial seat spoke volumes about the moral strength of the man. He didn't have to do it. He could have been persuaded to change his mind. Sure, he would have shipped some flak. But he would have survived them, as Bertie Ahern has.

So now for an exciting day. A new Ceann Comhairle. A trip to the Park. The ushering in by Bertie of the selected 15 to tell them they are members of the new Cabinet. The dramatic unveiling of the new Ministers, to the Dail and at Aras an Uachtarain where they will receive their seals of office.

Who will the new ministers be in the 30th Dail. Well, will John O'Donoghue move on? And allow Brian Lenihan in? Who will be the Green Party TDs in Government. John Gormley? Certainly. And the other? Eamon Ryan or Ciaran Cuffe? It's hard to say. Who will get the Justice portfolio? Will Lenihan (of whom they say Ahern isn't very fond) get promoted straight into justice? Will it be Dermot Ahern or even Willie O'Dea?

For now it's all second-guessery. Having second-guessed Ahern so badly in the past, I'm not going to plump for anybody.

Here's the piece I wrote for this morning's Irish Examiner, which I finished a couple of hours before the event.

After ten straight days of sultry sunshine, the skies finally broke over Dublin. And when the rain arrived in Dublin, it sheeted down from heavens for hour and hours, unrelentingly.

It was a timely reminder that for all the talk of heat and global warming Ireland still means rain, and lots of it.

And when the joint programme for government was finally produced yesterday, that was a timely remind that for all the talk of green tides and new dispensations, Ireland still means Fianna Fail, and lots of it.

Yesterday was always going to be the pivotal day for the Greens. There is no party as ideological in Ireland these days; no party as truly democratic. And to get into government the ‘realos’ (or realists) of its political leadership would have to sell the document to its membership, a sizeable minority of whom remain ‘fundies’ (or fundamentalists) – those who remain immovable on core issues like incineration or motorways or the war in Iraq.

And what’s more, not only did the leadership have to get a majority, it had to get a stonking two thirds majority – and that would be a hard ask for even the more conventional parties if they were embarking on a major change of direction.

As one member of the senior leadership described how the day would pan out: “We are a horribly open and democratic party. People will say their piece. We don’t know who is going to show up. We don’t know what proportion of members will back our opinion. We have a huge job of persuasion to do.”

And the huge job was not made any easier by the bad start the Greens had to the day. Somebody (presumably from the Fianna Fail side) leaked details of the joint programme for government to the media. And some party members began to choke on their muesli when they read that the party had ceded on Shannon; on the M3 Motorway at Tara; and on hospital co-location.

And soon after the doubters were ventilating their concerns, based on a newspaper report that wasn’t entirely accurate or complete. Former TD Roger Garland described it as a betrayal. Former MEP Patricia McKenna was expressing serious reservations about Shannon. The majority of those who were vox popped on radio seemed to be members of the party’s awkward squad, opposed to the programme on various grounds, ranging from Shannon to antipathy to Fianna Fail.

It took the morning for the pro-government forces to get off the back foot and rally back. For a couple of hours, the negatives were in circulation with a virtual monkish silence on the positives. The party began a round of intensive briefings with the media, pushing the fact that they had got a 3% reduction on emissions, a carbon levy, some concessions on extraordinary rendition, E350 million per annum for education plus (in defiance of expectations) two senior ministries and two junior ministries.

But on a cursory look, the draft programme had a kind of familiar look to it. Where had we seen that before? we all asked. Well, yes indeed, it was the Fianna Fail manifesto in the main, with some Green initiatives attached. But they were not as significant, as far-reaching, as potentially sea-changing as you might have expected.

If that was all the Greens had achieved late on Tuesday night, how slim had their gains been when they abandoned ship last Friday?

Transport 21 - and all its motorways - remains intact. All the co-location clinics will go ahead (the Greens could never really have hoped to budge FF on that one). No halt to current incineration projects either. There is not a syllable about the US military passing through Shannon – a surefire sign that FF weren’t going to budge on that either.

Sure, there was a line on extraordinary rendition but was it strong enough to ensure the regular inspection of plane traffic through Shannon.

Senior insiders said that it meant, that from Ireland’s perspective, the circus that arose in Iraq will not be repeated.

But one candidly admitted. “We tried for the strongest possible wordking but didn’t achieve in getting it. We will try to not allow the circumstances of 2002 and 2003 to re-occur. We have received a stronger wording on extraordinary rendition.”

The Green strategy to sell the document was three-fold. The first ingredient used by all its leading members yesterday was a refreshing and disarming honesty. They all agreed that they were disappointed with some aspects, that they didn’t achieve everything they wanted.

Dan Boyle was the person who fielded most of the questions from delegates at the Mansion House in central Dublin yesterday. This quote from him was emblematic of that approach.

“It is not a great document. It may not even be a good document but it does contain good elements and those elements come from us.”

Yes, predominantly Fianna Fail, but the Green Party leadership went in for a sustained hard sell on those ‘good elements’, stressing the influence its presence would bring to bear on government policy.

They stressed in particular that the Greens had won two senior ministries and two junior ministries and that those ministries would be in the areas – environment, energy, and transport – where the heart of the Green philosophy lay. If you had a minister in charge of that area, they argued, you were already half way there.

They also made the point – and you couldn’t argue with this – that the party has six deputies compared to FF’s 78. On top of that, the bigger party didn’t ultimately need them. Moreover, they argued, the thrust of the party’s direction over the past five years was to be in Government, to implement green policies before it was too late.

Sure, Fianna Fail wasn’t its first-choice bed-fellow. And in another instance of that honesty, of his public wrestling of conscience, Trevor Sargent made good on his promise and offered himself as a sacrificial lamb, saying the future of the country was more important that his own. We will not know for sure if he will make good on his offer to resign, or if his party will persuade him to stay on.

Two thirds was a big ask for the Greens. And they based all the negotiations on policy, insisting that if they could win enough tangible Green policies, then the membership could be persuaded.

Paradoxically, it might be mood rather than hard-nosed calculation on ‘have we go enough?’ that will swing it.

I spoke to a fair few delegates going into the meeting. Some were opposed. But others, while disappointed with some aspects, spoke of a mood for change, a sense that it was time, or of excitement that the Greens could enter government and transform the country, much as the country changed after Mary Robinson’s victory in 1990.

Two thirds was a big ask. But it was also a big question. And you sensed that finally the Greens were finally ready to answer it with a decisive ‘yes’.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE DEAL IS DONE

10.30PM. As dramatic as everything this past 12 days. The 59th minute of the 11th hour - after five, or was it six, deadlines - had passed.

There was no mistaken the barely suppressed euphoria of the Green leadership. As Dan Boyle walked towards the Green party HQ in Suffolk Street, his smile was as wide as the Bog of Allen.

The deal had been struck. The Greens will be in Government. Along with the PDs and independents of the ilk of Michael Lowry and Beverly Flynn. They will parlay a justification for that. And they are confident that they can carry the extraordinary meeting of the party membership tomorrow evening, with the draft document they have.

Little of it was revealed. Trevor hinted that they had made progress on standards in government and also on health, but all will be revealed tomorrow.

Will he be Tanaiste? Unlikely. The next big question will be how many ministries they can wrest out of FF - just one plus a super junior or two full ministries like the PDs got in 1989?

INSIDE POLITICS - ARE WE THERE YET?

3PM. There's been a lot of waiting around today. There was a brief flurry of scaredom following Dan Boyle's comments just before lunch. A couple of people believed he had said that fundamental differences still existed. If that were true, that would have spelt trouble.

But what he actually said was:

"We are a lot closer. There is not a huge difference. The items that remain are quite fundamental to the Green Party."

So we are very close. Boyle put it memorably last night but as yet there is no cigar smoke to be seeing rising above the roof of Government buildings.

There have been a lot of canards put out in the past couple of days. The first is that Boyle and John Gormley wanted to make the deal last Friday but Trevor Sargent put his foot down. That has been denied by all the Greens at the heart of these negotiations. In addition, there were rumours that a lot of the differences were over how many ministries the Greens would get; or about difficulties with the PDs. That wasn't true either. Sure, there was talk about composition of government but most of the sticking points related to policy. And as the quote from above illustrates, policy is where it's at today.

Even if a deal is secured, it's not a done deal by any means. The Greens still need to sell it to their membership tomorrow. The party needs a two-thirds majority of its membership to approve it. And while the leadership is making damn sure it's not going to put a deal on the table that's going to bellyflop with its membership, it will still involve a bit of a rocky ride for Trevor and the others.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE FINAL MOMENTS

By midnight on the night of the election count, it was clear that Fianna Fail would need to court the support of others if it wanted to get back into Government.

The party had done astoundingly well but even with its impressive haul of 78 seats was tantalisingly close but not quite there. To put it in a mountaineering vein, Everest is 8,850 metres high but the last few hundred metres is the hardest.

It was hardly a unique position for Fianna Fáil to find itself in. They were a couple short five years ago. But then the PDs had eight TDs and that was never going to be a problem. And they also found themselves coming up short in 1997. And it’s those events of ten years ago that makes the courting of the Greens so remarkable.

Bertie Ahern’s first election as leader of Fianna Fail saw the party win 77 seats. The PDs hit a bit of a trough that time, returning only four. The combined strength of both parties was 81. The situation facing Fianna Fail a decade later is uncannily similar. Granted, together they have one less at 80. But now, as then, there are enough independents there to allow them forge a deal.

So why have they worked so hard to put together what amounts to the State’s first Fianna Fail-led Rainbow rather than relying only on the traditional props of the PDs and ‘like-minded independents’?

On the face of it, it’s hard to fathom. On the Sunday morning following the election, Bertie Ahern spoke of the PDs and the Independents being his first preference and the Greens being his clear second preference.

And that seemed to make sense. If you rewind to 1997, the consensus was that FF and the PDs could do it with only two gene pool deputies. In the event, they secured the support of four non-aligned TDs (but all with hues of Fianna Fail, from light to deep). Then, many people predicted the government would last a year. But it lasted five, without any real bother.

So why change such a winning arrangement? The PDs needed to be in Government in order to survive. And FF would just need to secure the services of only three independents (though only one with a provenance in the party).

For the Greens, last week’s marathon talks with Fianna Fail was their political coming of age. Forty hours of tough negotiations were grinding – and you could see the tiredness etched all over John Gormley and Dan Boyle’s face on Friday evening.

When they broke down after six days, a whole host of theories (benign, conspiracy and Machiavellian) started doing the rounds. One was that FF were only stringing the Greens along to make sure the independents didn’t demand too much in their separate negotiations? The other prime theory it was all designed to muddy the waters and allow FF to enter negotiations with its real target, the Labour Party. Pat Rabbitte committed his party to support Enda Kenny until the vote for Taoiseach on Thursday – after that all votes would be off.

But anyone who watched the body language of both parties on Friday evening knew there was something else afoot. At their press conference Greens looked exhausted, disappointed – as if the race had been run. But within half an hour, one of the FF negotiators Seamus Brennan was on RTE’s Six-One News. He was remarkably upbeat and positive and grabbed every available second to praise Trevor Sargent and the Greens. In the background, the Fianna Fail negotiators were sanguine and relaxed. It wasn’t all over. The Greens no longer had the deadline of the special meeting on Sunday looming over them. If they took a bit of time to reflect on it over the weekend, both sides could return for a second bite.

And that’s how it happened. Informal contacts continued over the weekend. And in a remarkable article in a Sunday newspaper, Bertie Ahern used language you would never imagine him using in his political career.

"I belive that an environmentally sustainable economy is the only way forward for Ireland and the planet."

Bertie Ahern? It could have been taken straight out of a Sargent speech. That was very significant. And there was more. FF were genuinely open to new ideas. In the problem areas like climate change, transport, health and education, – where all the “insurmountable” obstacles were– Fianna Fail believed that the Green Party’s policies were “not incompatible” with our own. John Gormley gave a clear signal on RTE Radio’s This Week programme that the Greens were willing to talk. Within minutes FF had contacted him. The game was back on.

The speed at which things resumed was as breath-taking as last week. Within hours the Greens had produced a paper on the areas where there were differences. By noon yesterday, Fianna Fail had responded. All afternoon, negotiators from both parties shuffled between their headquarters and the Dail to take part in a series of bilaterals and informal talks.

The parties began drafting a programme for government based on agreed areas. The ‘bit ticket’ areas where there was still contention were parked. And from early afternoon, it was clear that those issues would be thrashed out by two men, Bertie Ahern and Trevor Sargent.

Ahern arrived into Government buildings in late afternoon, departed for a short while and then returned. Shortly before 7pm, Sargent left his party headquarters to make the short ten minute walk to Leinster House. He was accompanied by general secretary Dónall Geoghegan. John Gormley cycled home to change his shirt. The third negotiator, Dan Boyle, in Leinster House. Gormley and Boyle said that there were still gaps, that it wasn’t a done deal.

“Close but no cigar,” said Boyle, summing up the delicate balance between success and failure.

But why did FF go to such efforts to woo the Greens if they didn’t really need them? It was nothing to do with filibustering. It was partly the security of numbers, certainly. But there was also a sense that 15 years of FF and the PD would make it into a tired unelectable government – that the Greens would give renewal and reinvigoration, make the government as a whole more attractive to the next generation.

And that's why later on this morning the Greens will walk out of Government Buildings with a deal.

A version of this appeared in this morning's Irish Examiner

INSIDE POLITICS - TO THE WIRE

It's 8.25pm. A small piece of geography first. There are two entrances to Leinster House, one on Kildare Street and one on Merrion Street. Kildare Street is the front entrance. But the Merrion Street entrance is where Government Buildings are. I'll come back to this in a mo.

Bertie Ahern and Trevor Sargent have been closeted in Government Buildings for an hour now, trying to see if they can find some agreement on the contentious issues. We have already had four final deadlines, so nobody will be too surprised if it slips onto tomorrow.

The Greens have been around all afternoon. John Gormley cycled home about 45 minutes ago to change his shirt. Ciaran Cuffe had to go home to mind his kids. Dan Boyle put the state of play of negotiations best when we bumped into him at the Plinth at the front of Leinster House.

"Close but no cigar."

We will know very soon if there's a Government, or at least one that involves the Greens.

So why the intro about the two entrances.

Well, here are the likely scenarios:

If the Greens do strike a deal, then Bertie Ahern and Trevor Sargent will walk shoulder to shoulder out from Government Buildings on the Merrion Street side.

If there is no deal, then Trevor Sargent will lead the Greens out the front entrance of Leinster House on the Kildare Street side.

Reporters who are camping out awaiting development face a kind of Hobson's choice. If they are pessimists they will hang around the Kildare Street side; while the optimists have gravitated over to the Merrion Street side.

Wish everthing in politics could be as clear-cut as that choice!

INSIDE POLITICS - BREAKDOWN OF NEGOTIATIONS

On Politics
Harry McGee
It is decreed by nature that school examinations and talks on coalition government can only take place when the sun is splitting the rocks and there’s not a cloud in the sky.

This week must have felt like doing the Leaving Certificate again for the Fianna Fail and Green Party negotiators, cooped up indoors in an intense, tortuously long and energy-sapping experience, trawling through the minutiae derived from dense texts.


And as the exhausted Green party negotiators emerged into the June sunshine yesterday evening, they had the look of students who got a little tripped up by a trick question on the honours paper.

In a week that wavered between hope and despondency for both parties, it looked for a couple of hours early yesterday afternoon that a deal might be possible.

Both sides had compromised on a lot of issues during these marathon talks that ultimately lasted over six days. But the Fianna Fail negotiators thought yesterday afternoon that enough had been offered, that there was more than a sliver of hope that a deal could be forged. But as the afternoon wore on, it became clear that it was all slipping away. The three-person negotiating team for the Green Party went back to the wider reference group (comprised of 12 key members including the six TDs and Dan Boyle). And it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen.

It was always going to be difficult. The gulfs between policy and outlook were of Grand Canyon proportions. The biggest were identified early and were never bridged, were never close to being bridged.

strangely, we look at the potentially explosive mix of the Greens and the PDs and think of blockage. But that was never the issue. Indeed, last night the PDs confirmed that Mary Harney had signed up to a Bertie Ahern-led government on Thursday morning and Brian Cowen said as much yesterday as he entered the talks. And while the Greens say that this did not form any part of the negotiations, it’s clear that there was an – let’s phrase it delicately – an unspoken understanding that the PDs would be part of the mix.

The talks, instead, foundered on ideological gaps on a range of policy areas. Trevor Sargent spelt out some of them at the press conference yesterday.
The Greens, being the Greens, wanted more urgent action on climate change. Nothing would have outranked that from their perspective. This, after all, is what the party is about. Sure it is more savvy politically than in the past but there were core principles like this one that were never going to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

There were no specifics. But it’s as clear as a pikestaff that they argued for carbon taxes and a 3% annual reduction in carbon emissions. It’s likely that it also argued for congestion charges and – of course, another Green pillar – prioritising public transport over road-building.

There were other areas of disagreement. None were specified by either side last night but health, education, planning and local government just proved to be massive stumbling blocks.

"In each of these areas substantial blockages still remain. Because of this, the party does not believe it could enter government and stand over the policy proposals."

What was intriguing was that the talks had no concluded in bitterness or recrimination. They had taken place in a cordial fashion and the Greens had learned a lot during the process. But it was over. There was not enough give from either side.
The Greens could not sell what was on offer to its membership.

And while both sides said yesterday that their doors remained open, it is unlikely that they will revive the process. The gulf is still too wide. Time is against them. It’s almost certain now that Bertie Ahern will pursue the narrower option with the PDs and independents.

Fianna Fail had a massive advantage going into the negotiations. Its 78 seats meant that it didn’t ultimately need the greens, and so winning its support would be mainly a ‘belts and braces’ operation.

Its seriousness was clear - that was immediately evident from the composition of its vastly experienced team of Cowen, Dempsey and Brennan.

From its perspective, the Greens displayed a little naivety at times during negotiations. Cowen and Dempsey put a lot of emphasis on the financial costs of some of the Greens proposals. It was felt that their lack of experience in government gave them a certain lack of appreciation of the money aspects of what they proposed.

Stranger coalitions have been formed since 1948 but those governments have been forged on the anvil of necessity. Here there was none. Ultimately FF could take it or leave it as an optional multiple choice. But in the end, like the A students they are, they decided to stick to what they knew best. Enter Mary Harney, Jackie Healy Rae and Beverly Flynn.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREEN BY NAME, GREEN BY NAIVETY?

I was off for the last couple of days, down in Kerry as it happened, where the eavesdropped conversation in pubs and cafes was mostly - surprise, surprise - about politics and not about Big Brother.

Upon arriving back, I discovered that by missing two full days of talks I had missed, erm, nothing. When the Greens came out of Government buildings last night, they gave the same essential answer they had given for the previous five days... that some progress had been made but that there were significant gaps (or should that read gulf or canyons) between them on policy issues.

Naturally, there was a greater sense of urgency about last night. It had been nominally chosen as the deadline for concluding the talks, given that the Greens must go through a process of putting any potential deal to its party membership.

Dan Boyle's own slightly rueful assessment of it was very telling:

"We went into these talks on the basis that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

It seems that we have agreed a lot and then after talking for five days it also seems like we have agreed nothing."

For in reality, the huge gaps that were identified on the very first day of talks last weekend were the ones that looked like denying a deal. They were parked but when they returned to them, it's clear that Fianna Fail wasn't in a mood of being over-generous or of bending over backwards.

FF is in a position of staggering dominance. It doesn't really need the Greens. It has 78 deputies compared to a measly six for the Greens. You can understand where it's coming from. The Greens want to ban corporate donations. It's a core principle for the party, says Trevor Sargent. Well Fianna Fail don't want to ban corporate donations. And it's a core principle for FF. So, FF might agree to make the system a little bit more transparent (or in reality, given the impression that it is making the system more transparent) but otherwise it's not going to budge.

Where does that leave the Greens? It means they have to try to wring concessions from FF in other key areas, where there may be more give. What are they? Environmental issues certainly, including carbon taxes and more robust initiatives to tackle climate change. The health services and the controversial co-location project. The economy, especially FF's determination to reduce the higher rate of tax by a further 1%.

There is a difference in the decision-making process within both parties that has been emphasised by this process. Whatever the political leadership decided in the two big parties, the membership and the other politicians go along with. We've heard a couple of FF backbenchers griping about the Greens this week but if a deal is struck they'll just have to button up and go along with it.

I remember doing a phone-around of FF TDs after the 1992 election. I spoke to about 40 in all. All but one (Micheál Martin, as it happened) swore blind that they'd rather sup with the divvil than go into a coalition with the Labour Party. Then the deal happened and they all meekly went along with it. Harsh political lesson number one. Never forget that FF and FG backbenchers are the chorus line.

With the Greens it's different. Their membership wield a lot of power. A two-thirds majority of the 700-800 delegates expected at the Mansion House will be required. The negotiating team know that they need to present a strong deal with loads of tangibles to sell. If it's seen as too much of a capitulation - a sell-out of the most important core principles to go into Government - it spells only one thing.... c-u-r-t-a-i-n-s.

They've resumed this morning and will be there for another two hours at least, until 1pm and maybe a little later.

And even on the off-chance - and it is an off-chance - that a deal is struck, we may still not have a government. The next stage will be consideration of, and by, the PDs. There's a game of chess being played. Not only aren't we in the room to witness it. We don't know the rules. Worse, we don't even know if there are any rules.