INSIDE POLITICS - CARBON BUDGET

It wasn’t very dramatic in the end - after all carbon emissions is just above a double physics class on a Monday morning when it comes to excitement – but yesterday was the day during which the Green Party proved that it has what it takes to play its part in Government.

If its carbon budget was a revolution it was very much one with a small r. It’s the first budget of its kind every attempted in Western Europe and yesterday John Gormley admitted that in a sense, he was taking a shot in the dark.

"The concept of the carbon budget is new, and this year’s format can be seen as a pilot. I will consider how its content and format will be developed and improved in future years," he said.

What Gormley secured in the budget was the go-ahead for the much-touted 3% reduction in carbon emissions. And in his carbon budget yesterday Gormley essentially painted a picture of where we are now and where we need to be in 2012. And most importantly, he announced the first of the measures that need to be taken to get there.

n a complicated table that is strictly for anoraks, there were enough statistics and figures to tell us how it can be done. The broadbrush picture is as follows: The 2006 figures will show that Ireland emitted 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that year. To meet the 3% annual reduction and to meet our Kyoto targets, we need to reduce that by an average of 6 million tonnes each year. And the first of the new measures to help us reach that target include initiatives in energy; industry; and residential. As each year goes on, more measures will be added.

It’s a huge ask and will mean some pain. Gormley accepted that we might not achieve it but he said it would not be for the want of trying.

"We are not making it easy on ourselves. There is always a danger we may fail. We have set the bar high in striving for a 3% annual reduction in the Programme for Government," he said yesterday.

And to that end, when you look at the chart produced, it looks very like the Government will have to rely on what is euphemised as ‘flexible methods’. In simple terms, that means a carbon fund. At the moment we have E290 invested in it. In opposition, the Greens railed against it saying that Ireland was essentially buying its way out of its Kyoto commitments. But even with the new political dispensation, we may still need to rely on it. Note the subtle use of language in Gormley’s Dáil speech:

“I recognise – as Al gore did when he was in Dublin last weekend –that the flexible mechanisms are an integral part of the Kyoto Protocol agreement and an important instrument in promoting low emissions investment in developing countries. Notwithstanding this, the Government is committed to ensuring Ireland is able to fulfil its commitments by emission reductions.”

The message is: we may have to resort (reluctantly, sure) to the fund.

There were positives yesterday. The new measures that will phase out traditional incandescent lightbulbs in favour of energy-efficient ones; the new motor tax system that will be based on emissions not engine size; and the mandatory environment label system for cars (very similar to the labelling system used for white goods).

But it’s partly Lord Make Me Green but not yet. The new system for light bulbs will not be introduced until 2009. And despite the changes in vehicle registration tax being flagged in last year’s budget, they won’t be introduced until July. John Gormley didn’t really have a decent explanation for this yesterday; nor did he for the fact that the new motor taxes won’t be introduced until July.

And it’s generally been recognised that to achieve a 3% reduction in Co2, the Government will have to introduce a carbon tax. This was in the 2002 Government’s programme but was ditched in 2004. Now it’s back on the agenda. But Brian Cowen announced on Wednesday that it that the issue has been kicked to touch, with a Commission for Taxation being established to explore etc etc etc. When will it decide? How long is a piece of string?

Still, yesterday was a good start for the Greens and for Gormley. It will mean that a person buying a gas-guzzling car will be paying the top rate of 36% in VRT and the maximum E2,000 in motor tax. That means that the VRT for a high-powered car selling for E75,000 will be in the region of E24,000 with a E2,000 per annum tax bill.

As the AA’s Conor Faughnan pointed out yesterday:

“A mid range car emits 173 grams per carbon dioxide per km (an example would be a Ford Mondeo 1.6 litre petrol which emits 177g). I suggest within a short space of time the general public will be as familiar with these figures as they are with miles per gallon.”

Faughnan made a fair point that the motor tax was also a revenue raising operation (raising E83 million for the local government fund), which he considered unfair:

“Because it was called a Green Budget the Government was able to get away with increases in car tax of between 9 and 11%. There was no environmental dividend but there was a revenue dividend,” he said.

It was an undramatic yet promising start. There is still a long way to go on the road to reach the targets but at least the Government has at last got its hands on a road map.

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 - BOYLE NEW GREEN CHAIR

Greens have just announced the result. Dan Boyle was elected chair but not by all that much from Paul Gogarty and Bronwyn Maher. They used a points system (sorry, bad political correspondent, I don't know how it was devised). Boyle got 2415 points as against 2237 for Gogarty and 2180 for Maher.
The realos are in the ascendancy!!

INSIDE POLITICS - THE MEAN OF GREEN

One of the cardinal rules of journalism relates to statistics. Don’t drizzle them all over your articles, wizened news editors will tell you. Use no more than a pinch and
even then sparingly.

But then they are the selfsame news editors who will tell you that there’s a story lurking out there at every corner. Sadly there is not. Not that they would know. Because they don’t’ have to go out and brave the elements like the poor gom of a junior reporter.

But let’s stick with the rule. No statistics unless it’s an emergency. Except in sports reporting where anything goes. The more statistics the merrier. And it must be pointed out that some of my friends who argue that they are bored to tears with all the detail of the Anorak-in-Chief’s 18 hours at the Mahon Tribunal are the same friends who bore me to tears with hole-by-hole and stroke-by-stroke accounts of their last epic round of golf.

But you’ve got the message by this stage. Stats are for Prats. I’m very sorry to have to disappoint you but they are central to the following discussion. The figure in question is 3%. Keep it in mind. It gets worse. The debate will also include a number of phrases that will make readers desert this column quicker than the sight of a sergeant’s uniform will clear a country pub long after closing time. They are (brace yourselves): Global warming; climate change; and (ouch) carbon emissions.

It may feel complicated. But it’s important. Because that one statistic (3%) is going to determine the fate of this government on the political score (Bertie Ahern’s continuing encounters with the Mahon Tribunal will create its own dynamic on the personality front). Or to be more specific, the Green part of the Government. The 3% in question is the annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions the Government has set as a target ovr the next five years. Cumulatively that’s a 15% reduction between now and 2012. No matter which way you look at it, it’s a huge ask.

That little 3% statistic is going to become one of the litmus tests for this new government – similarly to the O.7% of GDP going to overseas aid; the 14,000 cops; or the 3,000 extra hospital beds. If it’s not achieved it won’t be the end of the line for Fianna Fail but it could be for the Greens.

The argument about global warming is undeniable at this stage. Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article that revealed that the ice floating on the surface of the Arctic fell to 1.6 million square miles on Sept. 16, a massive drop from the previous low of 2.05 million square miles, reached in 2005. Sure it will increase again in the winter but not by so much – the polar ice cap is definitely receding.

The challenge facing this Government in achieving this target is enormous. Even if it does, it will mean that other European countries with much more tardy records on the environment may steal a competitive edge on us in the short term because they are unwilling to endure the necessary pain.

And there are a couple of other tangled questions. The 3% reduction, it’s a reduction of what? The figures for this year will not be be available until 2009. The latest year for which figures are available is 2005, when just under 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents were emitted.

Let’s give a little meaning to that figure. When we signed up to the Kyoto Agreement, Ireland pledged that by 2012 its carbon emissions would be 13% higher its emissions in 1990. For a couple of years at the start of the century it looked like we were bringing them under control and we actually reduced carbon emissions. But the figures for 2005 made for grim reading – it represented a substantial rise of 2% from 2004 and meant that our emissions were running at over 25% more than our 1990 emissions (or 12% above the Kyoto target).

I know: we’re overladen with stats here. But the picture could be worse last year and worse again this year. The reason: there has been a huge increase of emissions from road transport because of higher car ownership and more freight being carried on the road. There is nothing to suggest (especially with the Government’s ambitious road-building programme) that there has been any reduction in that.

It’s true that agriculture – methane produced by cattle and sheep – remains the single biggest contributor at 27% (Michael O’Leary and others have made the argument that the Government will need to target farting cows before they target the transport and aviation sector). That is a fair point. But our dependency on cars, our addiction to cheap flights, all our road-building (with all those emissions from the cement factories); and our lack of insulation in our homes (even modern ones) will come at a cost.

Those cosy middle class solutions - Switching off lights, recycling, stand-by buttons, changing light bulbs – are not enough.

It could mean higher taxes on cars; fuel levies, huge costs to improve insulation in homes; big capital costs for converting to solar or to other alternative energy technologies in homes; congestion charges for our bigger cities; carbon taxes; and punitive levies for those who collect a lot of air miles.

Doesn’t sound that impressive on first hearing of it, that teensy weensy 3% target. But it’s going to inflict a lot of pain.

INSIDE POLITICS - COWEN NEEDS TO CALL BERTIE'S BOAT IN... RIGHT ABOUT NOW

Late on Wednesday night right as the confidence debate on Bertie Ahern drew to a close we learned a lot about the leader of Fianna Fail.

He rose to his feet and spoke for a little over five minutes. But that's all we needed, nothing more. For in the course of a magnificent, spontaneous, and from-the-heart contribution we witnessed an immense force, an outburst of deeply impressive moral authority that is rare in an age like this.

The leader of Fianna Fail we are talking about is of course the next one, the anointed one, and not the current one.

Brian Cowen was magnificent on Wednesday and once again - as he has done all year - he recovered the situation when Bertie Ahern found himself in crisis. With Cowen, to quote Beethoven, what comes from the heart goes to the heart.

The recipe for Ahern's own speech earlier was a little less ambitious. It contained a couple of tablespoons of lemon zest. For its clear bitterness lingered in his mouth for that hours that he sat silently fuming as as the opposition branded him as a liar.

Cowen sat beside Ahern for the duration of the broadside against him, giving an air of a man who was weary of listening to all the platitude and cliché. For FFers, that was a big thing, a demonstration of Cowen's loyalty to the organisation, and, by extension, to its leader.

But when his turn came, he quickly departed from the script to give a sermon on political values and on morality. Cowen quickly branded the opposition as hypocrites and opportunists. In doing so, he made the credible argument that they had only discovered high standards and morality after the election. Before polling day, he argued, they back-pedalled from BertieGate more quickly than a professional cyclist on dope, because they knew that by taking him on on this issue was like walking straigt into a haymaker in the first round.

The general point of Cowen's was the default position of all the Government parties that day. To wit: "The Tribunal will be the arbiter. If we are to avoid arbitrary justice let the Tribunal proceed with its deliberations," he said.

Green leader John Gormley also used this argument. But you have to understand that he had no choice. When the Greens agreed to Government, they understood that it entailed a Mephistophelean deal. They knew, they just knew, that their condemnation of Fianna Fail's dubious moral compass in the run-up to the election would be rendered hollow. Gormley may have quibbled with the nuances of the Fianna Fail countermotion to Enda Kenny's motion of no confidence. But that was sophistry. The Green Party - for not the first time and not the last time - had to swallow hard and back the Government, even though they knew it meant a demeaning compromise.

The most potent moment of Cowen's speech came when he lectured his adversaries the following thought: "I know right from wrong".

It was utterly believable, utterly compelling. And it made his case as a natural leader for his party. What we witnessed was a person who was the personification of the heart and soul of his party and what it represents and stands for. The problem, from a Fianna Fail perspective, is that the jury is out on whether or not his boss stands for that, and if he can distinguish between those relative values of right and wrong.

Later on Wednesday night, I spoke to a couple of TDs who would consider themselves Cowen's most ardent supporters. And they spoke about his speech that night in much the same way as Kerry supporters spoke about Colm Cooper's magic in the All Ireland final. The other pretenders - Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin and Brian Lenihan (Micheal Martin was playing an away fixture in the US this week) - all made perfunctory and pedestrian speeches during the debate. But Cowen in an unscripted and spontaneous way rose to the occasion, found the perfect pitch and tone, as he had done during Fianna Fail's darkest moments of the election campaign.

There's been a lot of old guff about the disconnect between us anoraks and Joe Public on this issue. I'm sorry but it's my belief that Bertie Ahern, the most successful Irish politician since the utterly unique Eamon de Valera, is now damaged goods, with serious questions surrounding his credibility.

A very senior Green politician to whom I spoke on Wednesday night offered the opinion that Ahern will step down during the Christmas recess. I don't believe it will happen that early, just as I don't belive that Ahern will stay on until he is 60.

Cowen loyalists at a senior level want Ahern to step down prior to the European elections in less than two years time. Like Gordon Brown, they believe the Tánaiste will need time to impose his imprint upon FF before the next General Election in 2012. Unlike Gordon Brown though, Cowen's loyalists do not necessarily speak on his behalf. For them, there is an element of proxy wish fulfilment. Sometimes you feel he is prepared to play the bridesmaid role forever!

Whatever, when he imposed himself on the debate this week, we witnessed a force, a force that's potentially strong enough to win a fourth General Election for Fianna Fail. It's time for him to get off the fence, to identify a date for a painless and seamless succession.

This is my column from Saturday's Irish Examiner

INSIDE POLITICS - COWEN IS ANOINTED

THE two Green ministers cycled to their new departments for their first day of work yesterday. This wasn’t a David Cameron
moment. There was no car and driver crawling behind Eamon Ryan or John Gormley carrying their suits and their papers as they negotiated the horrendous traffic and the even more horrendous weather. This wasn’t just a bit of show for the cameras. This was a real demonstration of intent and purpose. This may come as a shock but they really mean what they say.
But surprise, surprise, it wasn’t the biggest such demonstration or direct action yesterday. The Greens were outflanked on that score by Fianna Fáil. Decisively so. And the identity of the person who broke from the comfort zone of the peloton? Yes, none other than the man in the yellow jersey, the Lance Armstrong of Irish politics.

Part of the package that has made Bertie Ahern so phenomenally successful is that he is so guarded, so deliberately evasive and opaque with his language, that you’re never sure of how he’s going to act until he’s acted. And so adept is he at throwing the anorak of deception over every pronouncement that sometimes, you are not even sure of how he’s acted even after he’s acted.

His interview with Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ’s News at One yesterday was remarkable. If you ever pick up a gossip or celebrity magazine you are always promised that such and such a personality is giving their most revealing interview ever. And then you read it and you discover that it’s the most revealing interview since the most revealing interview they gave last month. We have that before with the Taoiseach too. He can talk an awful lot in interviews, yet say very little.

But yesterday was very different. O’Rourke is one of the best interrogative ministers in the business. But in truth there was no probing in it yesterday. A "chancing your arm" type question about the possibility of Brian Cowen succeeding Ahern opened up the floodgates.

And yes folks, this was Bertie Ahern giving his most revealing interview ever.

"I could give you a lot of political answers about this one, but I’m not going to go down that road," he said.

He described Brian Cowen as a great friend for 20 years, praised his brilliant mind and his experience.

"He’s a hugely, hugely experienced politician, and I think, from my point of view — and it’s obviously the party (which) will ultimately decide — from my point of view, he is the obvious successor to me in five years’ time or whenever."

Ahern was as relaxed and at ease with himself yesterday than at any time in the past decade. That was deeply unsurprising. He had lifted the political equivalent of Sam for a third time in a row, placing him is now firmly second only in the Fianna Fáil pantheon to Eamon de Valera., the man who founded and personified the party during its first three decades of existence.

His surprisingly direct blessing of Cowen as the “anointed” one was telling. O’Rourke compared it to Dev and Lemass. In the modern context, it is Blair and Brown, although without the personal tension, distrust and antipathy though, the relationship between the two leading figures in FF isn’t always as silkily smooth as Ahern portrayed it today).

At the same time the naming of his successor by Ahern was a move that took everybody by surprise. His strategy over the past five years has been to promote all the obvious candidates in the succession race to senior positions — Micheál Martin; Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin and now possibly Brian Lenihan. And though they talk themselves down, at least three of the other possibles harbour fierce and burning ambitions to be leader.

But in the past year, Cowen has copper fastened his position as the runaway front-runner. He has all the positions, in charge of the key finance ministry, deputy head anorak and now Tánaiste. At moments of crisis for the party Fianna Fáil — and most of them have revolved around Bertie Ahern in the past 12 months — he is the guy who has grasped the nettle by the stem.

Ahern’s TV-debate performance was crucial during the election campaign. But no more important than the formidable and dashing performances given by Cowen.
As with Across the water, Gordon Brown, has gradually taken on more of the prime ministerial duties. Here, we are also seeing a slow accession beginning to gather pace here. Cowen not Ahern was the Fianna Fáiler who spoke when the parliamentary party gathered on the plinth on Wednesday. Within two years, three at the most, the handover will take place. There is no way that Bertie Ahern will remain until he is 60 and he knows that as much as anybody.

Does Cowen want it? Of course, he does. He is at the heart of Fianna Fáil — he is the heart of Fianna Fáil. The Greens also have a leadership issue on their hands, chose their leader by a unique process called a preferendum. — they don’t vote but pick the chosen one by consensus.

It seems that Fianna Fáil will learn from them and choose a new leader by acclamation rather than by vote. And like his new Green ministerial colleagues he’s already pedalling away furiously.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREEN MEETING

It's just after 3pm and there are maybe 300 Greens at the crucial meeting that will decide its future. It's a horrible day in Dublin, unrelenting rain, some of it heavy. Will that dampen the Greens, the most ideologically driven party of them all? Hardly. I'd say as the hours wear on, the bulk of the Dublin membership will descend on the Mansion House.

Last night, the look of relief and of achievement was etched on the faces of the party's leadership - and even Ciaran Cuffe, who was perceived as the most wary of FF, said he was delighted with the deal.

But with the Greens its bottom-up democracy. And it just took a couple of minutes of cogitation to realise that this was not in the bag.

There is a minority in the party who don't want to see it deal with FF, come hell or high water. There are other minorities too for whom there can be no compromise on Shannon, or on incineration, or on colocation, or on the motorwarys, or on other issues.

Certainly, the leaked details that the Times did so well to get this morning was damaging. It focused on what the Greens had failed to secure (Shannon, the M3, colocation, Tanaiste) rather than the gains the party had made.

More details kind of filtered out this morning that showed that the Greens have secured some big ticket concessions on the environment and climate change, plus a couple of eye-catching promises on medical cards for young children, those with intellecutal disabilities, plus the securing of funding for the centres who use ABA methods for autistic children.

However, will it be enought to win over delegates. You must remember that there are still many 'fundies' in the Greens as well as the more pragmatic and realistic 'realos'.

And for the Greens to go into Government, they will need to secure a 66% mandates. That's a huge ask by any reckoning.

Talking to Greens today, many think it's delicately balanced and will depend on the turn-out. The more who arrive, the better chance it has of succeeding. But already there's doubts about whether or not it's enough to sway enough.

And there are also rumours circulating that Trevor Sargent may offer to step down as leader tonight. He said he would not lead the Greens into a Government with Fianna Fail. That's just about to happen. There's also a sense that the party membership may try to encourage him to stay.

We are all on tenterhooks!

INSIDE POLITICS - THE 11TH HOUR AND TICKING...

Experiencing what's going on between Fianna Fail and the Green is almost like intruding on somebody else's courtship. Yesterday morning I texted one Green Party insider to ask what was happening. The reply:

"No official contact yet just the fluttering of eyelashes across newsprint"

That brings us to Bertie Ahern's article in the Sunday Indo yesterday. (Incidentally, apropos nothing in particular, why do the amazing FF scoops the Sindo have got for the past three weeks remind you of the immortal phrase 'Payback Time'). If they could have got the end of the sentences to rhyme, it could have been one of the great love sonnets.

Gone was the man who told an Ogra Fianna Fail conference last February that he wouldn't cut, shovel or dig with those johnny-come-latelys.

Instead we had a sensitive troubadour who had the whole package instead of an acoustic guitar and a flower in his hair.

There was one sentence in particular that I thought that Bertie would never utter in a million years:

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

There you go. And the rest of it was astounding. That Fianna Fail was genuinely open to new ideas, to the concerns of the other side, and that he saw a lot of merit (which makes a big change from the past five years) in some of their suggestions.

And then he came to the policy areas where the biggest gaps are: on transport; health an education. The policies of both parties were "not incompatible" with each other.

What a phrase! What a politician!

So what was the strategy? There has been a lot of speculation that Fianna Fail misinterpreted the Greens, that they took what was a fundamental problem for the Greens as a bit of tactical brinkmanship. That could be true. But while the Greens felt it was more or less over, the immediate reaction from FF was stunning.

From the Seamus Brennan interview on Friday night, it became clear that FF wanted to go back to see if they could get a second bit. Maybe part of their thinking was that it was pointless adhering to the Greens timetable of holding the meeting on Monday. By stopping on Friday there was no meeting. That particular monkey would be off the Greens back. Both sides could pause and reflect on the totality and reality of the situation.

It's 5.30pm on Monday now. Bertie Ahern is apparently in Government buildings. The Greens are involved in bilaterals on some of the issues, mainly non-contentious ones.
The contentious issues will probably be dealt with - we are told - by both leaders, if it comes to that. There has been some progress today but we are still in the dark as to whether the problems that were insurmountable have now become surmountable.

The Greens are also working against the clock. They need an agreement this evening or tonight if they are to convene the special meeting of their members on Wednesday. Much more will become known over the next hour or two.

INSIDE POLITICS - TALKS FAIL

We are still trying to digest the news that the talks between Fianna Fail and the Greens failed and parse the flurry of words we have had since then to get something definite out of them.

There have been conflicting reports on whether this is merely a pause orthe end. Most of the Greens I have spoken to think it's all over, that it's impossible, that the gaps are just too wide.

But some FFers are still saying it's possible, that the famous Green Party meeting on Sunday was maybe a monkey the negotiators needed to get off their backs. Sure, the Dail comes back next Thursday but it doesn't necessarily mean we need to have a Government formed by then. That could be just the prelude for further negotiations with the Greens or - perish the thought - with Labour.

As a property though FF now come with an encumbrance - it's called the Progressive Democrats. That might be biddable for the Greens but not for the Labour Party.

Bertie Ahern said his first option was the PDs and the like-minded independents. But I sense that FF are nervous about that arrangement and its innate instability. While the Greens are now saying that a deal is unlikely, politics can sometime be more that the art of the possible - can elevate itself into the art of the impossible.

INSIDE POLITICS - NEGOTIATONS

Charlie McCreevy once said that he knew Bertie Ahern better than most and, at that, he knew him only 20%.

Fianna Fail took most people by surprise whey they held their first formal discussions with the Greens yesterday, moving much more quickly than was anticipated to expand their options on forming government.

But anyone who thinks the serious nature of the talks with the Greens – and the seriousness is particularly evident from the smaller party – signifies that this is now the option the FF is pursuing is mistaken.

At the same time, Fianna Fail is doing its business on all fronts. Dealings are continuing with the rump of the PDs and also with the independents – significantly Michael Lowry issued his first statement yesterday confirming that he too had been contacted by the Government.

He said: "I accepted an invitation from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to negotiate on the terms of my involvement in a cross-party alliance to provide a stable government."

The latest overture by Fianna Fail to Lowry brings to twelve the number of TDs it might include in government.

Sources in Fianna Fail have spoken about forming its own kind of rainbow, with the PDs, the Greens and independents.

The downside of that arrangement is that Fianna Fail would have sacrifice more cabinet positions than what its own TDs consider necessary – at least two senior ministries (one each to the PDs and, at the very minimum, to the Greens) and at least two so-called ‘super junior’ ministries.

The other is that the Greens are to some FF rural TDs what reds were to McCarthyite Americans in the 1950s. They look at the Greens’ stances on corporate donations, on roads, on carbon taxes, on once-off housing and they see meddlers. However, of all the parties, FF backbenchers know their place and if a deal is struck with the deals, they will go along with it obediently while grumbling privately.

There’s a couple of problems for the Greens too, that are not all that easy to get over. For one, Trevor Sargent will have to step down as leader if they do a deal with Fianna Fail or else he will be accused of blatant inconsistency.

Secondly, the party is going to have a tough job convincing its members – and its potential supporters in future elections – that it is doing right by the country by going into government while at the same time ceding some of its core principles including a ban on corporate donations; carbon taxes, and transport policies.

The party really wants to go into government. But a sardonic political veteran observed yesterday. “If the Green Party is prepared to compromise on core principles so that it can wallow in high office, they will get hammered.”

From the moment that a third-term was confirmed, Mr Ahern has continued to speak about a Government of stability and longevity. In other words, what he wants is one that lasts for five years, come hell, high water, or further damaging Tribunal allegations.

Part of that equation is numbers. If he has four or five TDs above the magic 83 mark, it will allow the Government some breathing space, and make the government of the country over the next five years less of a hairy roller-coaster ride, where the government will always be vulnerable to a defection or an illness that gives the opposition a chance to defeat the government in the chamber.

However, the corporate memory within Fianna Fail still has bitter memories of the manner in which the most secure majority of all time – that with the Labour Party in 1992 – fell asunder amid mutual recrimination just two years later.

We tend to attribute a Machiavellian slant to everything Ahern says, and McCreevy's 20% assessment gives credence to this. But maybe he's been right all along and his preferred solution is the PDs and independents and he’s sounding out the Greens just to see if it’s a feasible option.

In another sense, he may be playing them all off one against the other to maximise FF’s negotiating position and minimise what the smaller parties might demand in relation to ministries and policy concessions.

And there are some who say that all of this talking is a prelude to FF approaching Labour with an unbeatable offer in the run-up to June 14th, knowing that it has at least one or two other deals in the bag.

The only thing that’s certain is that Fianna Fail has all the chips on its side of the table and is in a powerful position.

But trouble may be coming down the tracks in the shape of the Quarryvale module and the fresh questions facing Mr Ahern.

There’s an element of ‘don’t mention the war’ about this issue. It’s quite possible that a deal can be negotiated with ‘moral high ground’ parties. Of course, the $64,000 question is the $45,000 question, if you get the drift. Will that be conveniently long-fingered for future consideration.

Expect a long week of horse-trading ahead.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREEN PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST

It's probably the best political broadcast of this election campaign so far. It wouldn't be stretching it to say it's the best ever in Irelnad.

I have misgivings about using children and getting them to use scripted lines, as vehicles for grown-up thoughts.

Having said that, they are essential for the clever punch line - by the time they get a vote at the age of 18, it will be too late. Amazingly shot. Simple sentiments. Staggeringly delivered. Food for thought.

Of course, Fianna Fail is also promising a spectacular tonight, haveing sought and obtained the endorsements of both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. That was a huge coup! But I just sense that the feelgood factor from the North, the championing of Bertie Ahern as world statesman, will not be enough to turn the tide for FF.

INSIDE POLITICS - GREEN PARTY DECLINE?

A noticeable trend in the Irish Times poll this morning was upward shifts and slideage of support for the non Big 2 parties. Labour is on a roll at the moment and has displaced both Sinn Fein and the Greens as the 'coming party'. Its three point jump to 13 is consistent with findings in our own poll and the Sunday Business Post on Sunday. After months of green tide talk, the Greens look like they may be on the ebb. Five per cent suggests a loss of traction to Labour in the key Dublin constituencies. At that level of support, there are no guarantees it can retain all its seat.

And that will make a lot of people who predicted they would win big a little bit silly.

In our own supplement I predicted the following state of the parties:

FF 67; FG 47; Lab 22; GP 11; SF 8; PD 4; Others 7.

Of course, it would be churlish for me to pledge my life on it. These things are merely punt. And when you tot up all the individual constituency predictions done by the media in the run-up to elections, you see how horribly wrong we turn out to be.

In any instance, I will have to revisit my predictions this weekend, and perhaps revise the Greens down, SF up a little, and Labour up a little. But then, I'll probably have to do the same next weekend. Fortunes wax and wane furiously in the heat of battle.

At least I'm in relatively good company. Watch this classic piece of RTE footage from the 1981 election where Vincent Browne (dig the lamb chops!) admits he was completely wrong with his predictions. Follow this link!

INSIDE POLITICS - LATEST POLL

The Irish Times/Tns mrbi poll results tonight will give the three main parties a little to boast about and a lot to chew on.

The results are: FF 36 (+2); FG 28 (-3); Lab 13 (+3); SF 10 (-); GP 5 (-1); PDs 2 (-1); other 6 (-).

(Read more on its Breaking News site)

FF will be happy that it's got a little bounce. It will help galvanise the troops, get the likes of Cowen to thump the hurley onto the dressing room table, telling them that they're still in the hunt.

But 36% is low. Worse ever low. FF tend to go down as well in the election campaign but they've rarely started off a campaign as uncomfortably low as they are now.

The two worst performances were under Albert Reynolds in 1992, and under Bertie Ahern in 1997. In fact Bertie's first election as leader was pass remarkable - what hid over the sclerosis was slick vote management. Last time around FF attracted transfers from everywhere - it's not going to happen now.

FG has fallen three but it's still happy with 28. Even the party's most enthusiastic strategists (why does Frank Flannery come to mind?) were saying that looks a bit high. So it's not too put out by the fall, unless it's a sign of a trend (and the Sunday Business Post poll on Sunday will tell us that).

We've been talking about Sinn Fein and the Greens for two years now. But Labour is the story of the past month. The party is buoyant. Pat Rabbitte has had a good first ten days of the campaign. On 13% it will make gains at the expense of FF, and some of the targeted gains of FG and the Greens (who are not at 5% - showing some signs of decline in recent months).

Rabbitte and Kenny are at the highest level of satisfaction. FF got a mini bounce this time in sympathy for Bertie, but nothing like last October. SF look solid, and Gerry Adams satisfaction rating has jumped, a direct reflection, I would guess, of the feelgood factor around Stormont on Tuesday.

Shows how fluid, how volatile and how fickle it's all going to be. There's a fortnight left. There will be a lot of skelping!

INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE'S SUNDAY SWOOP

Like Enda Kenny I was caught on the hop by the pre-dawn swoop by Bertie Ahern yesterday morning. The FG leader was only in Mayo. Unfortunately for me I was in Lisbon without a computer.

You have to play with whatever hand you are dealt. And so I wrote the analysis piece below in a cafe in the Baixa using my mobile phone. It's not exactly a mobile. It's a Nokia 9300 smart phone. It's the size of mobile phones from circa 1999 and opens to reveal a very very small QWERTY keyboard. You can't touch type with it and it's hard going when you have chunky fingers like me... but in an emergency, it's great.


Sorry for being so boring about the technical details but one of the great things about blogger.com is that you can post your scribbling by email. So it;s great when you are in an area with internet connections as zippy as a tranquilised three-toed sloth.

And here's the piece I tapped out on it in great haste (verging on panic) yesterday. Apologies for unspotted typos!

Ireland woke up yesterday morning to discover that the tactics of the pre-dawn police raid had been transferred to the world of Irish politics.

 

As the citizens rubbed sleep from their eyes, they opened their curtains to see a changed landscape. Like a fresh fall of snow, almost every lamp-post in the country has now been comandeered and festooned with somebody's beaming portrait.

 

And talk of a surprise move by Bertie Ahern. Five years ago - without warning - he arrived into an almost empty Dáil chamber late at night during an adjournment debate to dissolve the Dáil.

 

This time round the chicanery was even more convoluted. For months he has strung people along about the actual date of the election. He was adamant that the election would not be held on a Friday. But besides the Taoiseach dropping a couple of hints about the Dáil returning for at least a week after Easter, there was no real certainty about the date. Most zeroed in on May 24 but with caveats and qualifications. For when Bertie Ahern is playing a tight game he tends to use a stapler to make sure his cards are close to his chest.

 

The big surprise wasn't May 24 but the dawn raid on Áras an Uachtaráin. In hindsight it makes perfect sense of course. The only piece of legislation that was essential from a credibility perspective was the Criminal Justice Bill, which passed all stages in the Dáil on Tuesday.

 

From that moment the clock was ticking. The minimum time allowed for a campaign is three weeks. And so when it wasn't called on Thursday, we knew that Thursday May 17th was a goner.

 

One of the curious anomalies of the Irish electoral system is that strict rules and limits apply to spending during the election campaign. But before it's called, parties can spend any amount, infinite amounts is they have them.

 

That's why it seems that every billboard and poster site in the country has been given over to those messianic (and photoshopped) images of Bertie for the past month. That's why Fianna Fail favours minimum campaigns to allow it maximise its pre-campaign campaign spending, if you follow my drift.

 

Most commentators assumed it would be Tuesday or Wednesday of this week when Bertie would go to the country, to allow a bare three weeks. But in the event, there's now 25 days between the opening and closing of the race.

 

And why it makes sense is that the President was leaving for a trip abroad yesterday. While the Taoiseach could have signalled the dissolution of the Dáil to the Council of State in Mary McAleese's absence, that would have seemed shallow and mean-spirited for such a formal and serious duty.

 

But then, you would tend to think that Mr Ahern might have almost had a change of heart after seeing the poor showing for his party in the latest opinion poll on Friday. But there's a school of thought (and a persuasive one) within Fianna Fáil that believes that the party needed to go at the earliest possible moment. They argue that in 2007 the name of the game would be about cutting your losses. For them, even May 24 was too late - it should have been May 17or 18.

 

The notion of a strongly regrouped opposition has been trending since the local and European elections. After a swerve back to the Government last autumn, the momentum has seemed to swing back to the Mullingar Accord parties again.

 

The latest national poll suggests that Fine Gael is breathing down Fianna Fáil's neck but that scenario - huge FG gains; FF wipeout - isn't really borne out by the Red C constituency opinion polls conducted for Thomas Crosbie Holdings titles.

One opinion poll does not an election make. But the trends - and the unmistakable vibes being transmitted by the growing self-confidence of Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte - all point to one of the great political clichés being flogged to death in the next few weeks ... yes, it's going to be too close to call.

 

Arguably, since Alan Duke's Tallaght Strategy of 1997, Irish politics has not been characterised by a clash of ideas; rather a clash of personalities, styles and credibility. When you compare economic policies, for example, the parties have all converged into the centre and agree the same fundamental principles (low taxes, both personal and corporate). Sure there are differences (stamp duty, auction politics etc) but they are nuanced - most are so subtle to be indistinguishable.

 

When it comes to crime, the three mainsstream parties are all slurping out of the same trough, out-toughing each other. The proof of that particular pudding is that both FG and Labour tacitly approved Michael McDowell's hardline criminal justice legislation by abstaining when the vote was called in the Dáil last Tuesday.

 

It's only in health where there's a bitter row over Mary Harney's plans to build private clinics on public land that we see real gap in terms of thinking and ideology.

 

Is all that sameness and uniformity healthy for democracy?

 

The choice that faces the electorate is akin to the choice between two banks or two mobile phone operators. In some of their policy choices, parties have been too influenced by focus groups, running scared of alienating the massive swathe of innately conservative and careful voters who occupy the middle ground. It's for that reason, I'd argue, that Sinn Féin and the Greens are doing so well. Each has an easily identifiable, clearly distinctive, message that brooks no ambiguity.

 

People forget that for all his undoubted charisma Bertie Ahern achieved only 39% of the vote in 1997. That was exactly the same as Albert Reynolds five years earlier. Why was Reynolds considered a disaster in 1992 and Ahen a triumph in 1997? Improved and ruthless vote management gave the party a huge seat bounce.

 

Will this be as bad as '92 or as disastrous as 1982 when Charles Haughey almost allowed FG become the largest party in the State for the first time?

 

It's fascinating to see that in spite of his travails and blunders during BertiGate, Mr Ahern is still his party's greatest asset. Mr Kenny will struggle even now to convince people that he has the mettle for Taoiseach whereas Mr Ahern can just point to his track record. Having said that. the FG leader has travelled a long way.

 

Of course, there'a a presidential flavour to all parliamentary elections these times. For FG, its biggest project has been to build Mr Kenny up. For all his mercurial abilities as a debater, there were doubts about Mr Rabbitte's populist appeal. But if he's not loved, he is respected, and that's backed up by the deference accorded to him on the streets.

Michael McDowell also personifies the PDs. In survey after survey people profess to despise or loathe him. But like Nicholas Sarkozy he sets out to be deliberately divisive or provocative because he knows that at the same time as he alienates some, he attracts others. But will it be enough to save his party from the meltdown that has been widely predicted?

 

For SF, it is Gerry Adams's face we will see though he's not a candidate and not as major a player in Southern politics as he likes to think. The Greens will be only party that will trade on its message rather than on Trevor Sargent's image. Both parties will do well, so well in fact that they will prevent a clear-cut overall result either way. The green message - be it republican or environmental - has huge potency with the Irish electorate right now.

 

If Fianna Fail win through, it will mean Bertie Ahern will be the longest leader in office since de Valera. Perhaps people have not yet tired of Bertie but have tired of his ministers. One of the imponderables (until polling day that is) is if the Government retains enough affection or if people have finally tired of this administration.

The picture will be complicated. We now face 25 days of claim, counterclaim, attack and counter-attack. What is certain is that on May 24 the people will speak. It's only then will we know if the status quo has prevailed or has fallen. Or, more likely. that we're entering into the limbo of a hung Dáil.

INSIDE POLITICS - Focus Group: but focus on what?

I wrote about Frank Luntz in February, the last time he did his exercise for RTE (see piece here).
Now he has done his third (and possibly last) pre-election programme for RTE and my reservations about the exercise have been reinforced (see full programme here).

Back in February I wrote:

And that brings me to the second point. The momentary experience. The group was asked to respond to one - or two at the most - sequence(s) featuring politicians. It was a critique of one television performance, expanded into an unsatisfactory show of hands (based on that clip alone) on the worth and wherewithal of that politician.

I'm sorry, but you don't need a dialometer to telly you that Brian Cowen will bore the backside of you when he starts with Department of Finance Bullshit Bingo (and delivers it with all the enthusiasm of a kid who's been given ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys in confession). And you know that Brendan Howlin is never going to stoke up the masses using pretentious words like interdict.

But the problem, as far as this exercise is concerned, is that both have stood and delivered on many other occasions, with punch and pungency. It's like writing off Dublin's All Ireland chances on the basis of their defeat by Tyrone in Croke Park at the weekend. And why for that matter use a short Dan Boyle sound-byte on the environmental aspects of the Budget delivered on the plinth of Leinster House? Why hone in on Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin on health, rather than focusing on the essence of the Sinn Féin message, its stance on the national question? Granted, you have to select what clips you have. Indeed, you have to cut your cloth to suit your measure. But people will ultimately assess parties and personalities in a more complex fashion.

The third niggling feeling I have about focus groups (in general)is this. A disparate group of people are brought together in an artificial setting. Unlike a jury, they never have the time to settle down and get over that initial hump of discomfort and reserve. And often (and as far as I know you could see it here too) the debate is dominated by a couple of individuals. Others, either through reserve or politeness, will tend to row in and agree there and then. But at home later, while standing over the kitchen sink or staring into the fire, they may come to a radically different opinion on an issue or personality. I also think that also explains some of the inbuilt flaws of opinion polls.

This third of the RTE Week In Politics Specials came from the West of Ireland. Again the production values were super-duper and the three expert panellists (Terry Prone, Ivan Yates and Noel Whelan) as well as presenter Sean O'Rourke were all entertaining and incisive in their interpretation of what they saw.

But you must separate Luntz the PhD academic hot shot from Luntz the showman. And what he has done here is made a circus out of a focus group, made it interesting for telly by using some clever technology and graphics, and installing himself as the ringmaster.

The ingredients are simple. In traditional focus groups, participants are asked to state their opinions on leaders, their promises and presentation after they have heard a clip or seen a picture. Luntz uses a little electronic gizmo, a kind of dialometer, that he gives to each member of the group.

So if they like what the person is saying, or the person themselves, they will turn the dial up towards 100. If they don't, they turn down (and with Michael McDowell, the poor man is in freefall the second his image appears before them). All this information is collected, number-crunched, portrayed on the screen as a running graph, making it look very authoritative and scientific.

But what does it tell you, ultimately? That people prefer listening to Pat Rabbitte than they do Trevor Sargent; or that Bertie easily outranks Enda with this group of people. It's like a restaurant review. Interesting to read, a bit of an indulgence, but will it determine the groceries you buy? Will the performance of a leader in one speech make any difference on polling day? I think not. For if it did, Trevor Sargent would definitely be a goner.

This reality is that a small group of people in one geographical location, strangers to each other, are gathered together. They tell us a few interesting things, about personalities and about issues.

In relation to issues, they views to be so disparate and so localised and personalised they could never be deemed authoritative as a trend.

And when you get to personalities, it's a little more complicated. Bertie does well when he's talking on the level, about real things, about tangibles. Kenny fares very poorly. He's criticised for not being specific enough, for being too vague. But then a few minutes later the focus group loves Gerry Adams even though he is vague to the point of vacant. And they like Pat Rabbitte because Pat Rabbitte is such a powerful speaker. And they don't warm to Trevor because a) he gave a piss poor speech and b) they don't like the hard message he's selling.

A lot of seems to come down to whom the group instinctively warm, whom they recognise. If people are as disengaged from politics as we hear, it's no surprise that Bertie (who has all the cards stacked in his favour) will score higher on the Richter scale of recognition, love and warmth. All this tells us a bit, but it's hardly representative of wider society.

The second ingredient is Luntz himself. As ringmaster, he is all front and showbiz, busier and more furious in movement than an orchestra conductor as he brings us through the gamut of trick ponies and verbal acrobatics.

And boy does he make a great welcome for himself. He reminded the focus group that Enda Kenny's 'Contract for a Better Ireland' was a steal from 'The Contract for America' that swept Newt Gingrich's republicans to power in the mid 90s. Luntz is a first-class self-publicist - he also claims credit for euphemising the terms oil drilling and global warming to fuel exploration and climate change. The influence of Luntz and his methods has been well here (and in the UK and in the US) hyped but I'm not convinced that they tell us anything that will cause fundamental shifts within political parties.

Yes, it makes for compelling viewing. But some of the stuff that emerges from this focus group as the really important things will have zero bearing when people go to cast their votes - like Michael McDowell being to blame for pubs in the West of Ireland closing down (!!!!! - by the way, he has absolutely nothing to do with it); too many immigrants coming in; and the broadside a couple of them took at An Taisce for allegedly being anti-development and anti-progress.

Surprisingly, this week, a very trenchant criticism of his method was made by one of the programme insiders, Terry Prone one of three panellists on these Week in Politics specials. In her Irish Examiner column yesterday, Prone made some very salient points, that brought a bit of reality back into the debate - hitherto, there has been uncritical enthusiasm for Luntz's intervention into the campaign. Here's a little of the argument she made:

Luntz passionately believes that gathering 30 people selected by Red C into a room and barracking them with questions about politicians will throw up infallible predictions about what’s going to happen in the election.

He’s wrong. What you get when you put those 30 people in a room is pub talk, made seem more significant than it is by inspired editing of four hours of material so the dross ends up on the cutting-room floor.

Tough stuff. You can read Terry Prone's full column in the Irish Examiner here.

INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE AHERN INTERVIEW

I interviewed Bertie Ahern last week and the piece appeared in the Irish Examiner on Easter Monday (full transcript of printed interview below). I have done hundreds of interviews during my career. And this is the first that I have ever done in Q and A format, rather than in the more conventional narrative style.

The Q and A style of interview was popularised by John Waters in his HotPress days (and he based it on interviews he used to read in the religious magazine, The Word). Vincent Browne was also partial to it, and also used it regularly during the time he was writing a weekly interview for the Irish Times.

In a way, you'd think it's an easier way of writing up interviews. All you do is transcribe the recording and Bob's your uncle! Not, not quite. A half an hour interview will produce about 4,000 words and unless you are writing for the New Yorker, it's not going to fit in. So it becomes an exercise in pruning.

Plus, it makes it harder to describe how a person reacts to a question. HotPress used to use (laughs) to convey laughter but it always read silly. A couple of times Bertie Ahern, while exceedingly pleasant throughout, commented in a hard-nosed and hard-chaw way to questions about political opponents. What I tried to do was describe all those kind of reactions, the timbre, the way he projected himself at the start.

For some reason, the Q and A format seemed very suited to this particular interview. He was more considered, more in-depth in answering questions than in previous interviews and he went to some lengthts to put context on some of his responses. By going for a straight narrative account, you would have lost a lot of the quotes to description and paraphrase. In a way, this interview is the edited highlights, rather than the match report from the next day.

THE INTERVIEW

Bertie Ahern, we are often told, does not obsess with his place in history, doesn’t have the need to leave vainglorious legacies like Tony Blair (reputedly) does.
But even before the nation decides his fate this summer, Ahern will have his place in modern Irish political history assured.
De Valera may have moulded the State; Lemass may have made it modern and outward looking but Ahern made it prosperous and also banished forever all inferiority complexes.
It’s too early, much too early, to judge how history and posterity will judge him. But arguably he now ranks second only to Dev in the FF pantheon.
But for all that, what is most disarming about him - and this goes a long way to explain his enduring appeal – is the sense of ordinariness he projects. His critics will claim that it’s a long time since he has had to use a petrol pump. And it is true that he himself is not shy when it comes to reminding people about the interests and achievements section of his C.V. Yet, when most people think of Bertie Ahern they think anorak.
As you are interviewing him, your are reminded a little of the GAA player or manager. When they are asked how they won crucial championship matches, it is never because they were a better team. No, it’s invariably because the media wrote them off.
It is ditto with Bertie Ahern who often points to his successes in terms of defying those who underestimate him, while also having a slight dig at the media and other detractors.
It’s clear too that there’s an election in the air because there’s a harder edge to his comments. In a wide-ranging interview he is much tougher than in previous Irish Examiner interviews, on the effects of Bertie-Gate, on opposition claims, on Fine Gael, on Enda Kenny. He also delivers a very strong castigaton of the Greens.
He also reveals that having ruled out a Friday, the election mightn’t take place on a Thursday and that it will take place at the end of May (after the 23rd) at the very earliest.
In that vein of ordinariness, he takes on the chin the national pastime of poking fun when he garbles sentences. And true to form, he creates a brand new Bertie-ism when saying he doesn’t mind Bertie-isms.
“I have a good sense of humour. I have been doing Pub Grub and all of those programmes…”
(Of course, he meant to refer to Today FM’s ‘Gift Grub’)

Irish Examiner: How can you deny after the Ard Fheis that Fianna Fáil is not getting involved in auction politics?

Bertie Ahern: Our tax and spending proposals are costed. They are fully deliverable in a strong economy.
What we put out in the Ard Fheis is well within the limits of what we have been spending on welfare and tax in the last number of years.

IE: What’s your response to the charge of 53 promises and E300 million a minute during your speech?

BA: Enda Kenny made 23 promises (in his speech), my guys tell me, and nobody mentioned that, only that he made one…
While others have sought to claim it’s auction politics, the charge does not hold up to scrutiny.
I watch what happened in the AF. There was a group of people who said beforehand: They (FF) have no ideas. They have no routine. They have no innovation. If I made the speech and didn’t put in the things, they would have said: ‘I told you so. No ideas. No fresh ideas. Too long in Government.
And then when I came out with a whole lot of new thinking they couldn’t take that.

IE: Some say you were panicked into making the speech. Did you plan to make those promises?

BA: My draft speech, I had back in early to mid February.
The stuff that was in it was taken from our draft manifesto and I took out a few and put in a few as we go along but most of the big ones didn’t change a line.

IE: Is the election going to be fought on the broad theme of Bill Clinton’s famous line, ‘it’s the economy stupid’?

BA: There are two things in it to be honest. There’s the economy and all the economy means… Then the second issue is local issues. The local issues totally differ. As I toddle around the country (I encounter them). They can be big or small. In Cork at the moment it’s the airport. In Galway it’s the water. All around the country, there’s a national issue and then local.

IE: Look at what happened to Tony Blair in his third election in Britain. Will FF struggle to maintain its seat and if you win, will you just about limp home?

BA: Every election is different. I have fought so many of them in my career. We did very well in the last election and we will be fighting hard to hold on in most constituencies and in a couple of other constituencies trying to increase our representation.
What you have to do is just get out there and put in the best work you can, the best policy formulation. Do you plans. Do your publicity. Do all the things we are rolling out.
I have to laugh at the position. Two weeks ago, they said FF have no posters, are not doing up any leaflets, and I met a TD today and he said you have a huge amount of posters up, you have the (FF newspaper) out, you have ads everywhere, do you not think it’s too soon?
I think it’s about work. It’s about what’s the policy agenda, fulfilling that, finishing out our period of work, right up to the end of April and into early May, we still have a huge amount of launches. And I’m going to keep on doing that, on climate change, getting our position out. Ticking off our boxes on what we promised to do.
We have a lot of legislation we won’t get through but that we’re going to get published because at least we want to get the work finished on it.
It will be harder because you are ten years in (power). Tony Blair, in fairness to him, would have walked the last election if it wasn’t for Iraq. The one issue, the international thing that went wrong for them, in so far as they thought they were going to get in and get out.

IE: And what has been your Iraq?

BA: Health is probably the one that comes up and repeats itself.
There are good stories in health. The one good thing about the row over the maternity hospital in Cork is that everybody now knows there’s a world-class hospital in Cork. In Tullamore, they are opening up a huge hospital.
There’s no balance in this (debate). This is all about let’s find the story, let’s find where the crash is, let’s talk about the reaction.

IE: But Enda Kenny said he’d make the election a referendum on health?

BA: Looking at health, we met most of targets on staff and on beds.
Look at the cardiac strategies. They are completed. In 1997, the only cardiac was in the Mater. There’s cardiac in Galway and Cork now. It’s not a issue. There’s no waiting list for (cardiac) stents.
The cancer strategy is very good. It’s nice if it was finished (but work continues). Maternity is very strong.
We are spending more per capita on the capital programme than any other country in the OECD except Norway.
(He continues with a defence of co-location): The length of time (projects have taken) when we have given them money. There were
areas that we gave money in 1999 and they have not finished yet.
It’s Too slow. I’m not a great lover of the private sector but it’s quicker.

IE: You were described before as the Teflon Taoiseach, as Fianna Fail’s best electoral asset. Has the loan controversy of last autumn changed that?


BA: When I went in 1997, the view was that it would be impossible to beat the three amigos as they marched around town together, that I would be a lightweight and that I wouldn’t be able to beat them.
There were three experienced guys, Spring Bruton and de Rossa.
There was the fact that I came up on the outside track with our logo: ‘People before Politics’. It surprised people.
Commentators generally felt (the Rainbow) would win that election after two and a half years.
I think we caught them out and built on that in 2002, we had a very good election.
Nobody can deny the success of this Government but there are people… you built up battles with various groups. That’s inevitable when you are government.

IE: But what about your reputation?

BA: I don’t think about it too much. I would meet more people in two or three days around the country than most people would meet in a year.
You would very quickly detect if they had totally gone off you or not. And they are not.
I addressed public meetings last Friday or Saturday to probably 3-4,000 people which was bigger than the FG Ard Fheis and it was only my usual toddle around the country for a Sunday afternoon.
I won no election on my own. I didn’t win 1997 or 2002 on my own.
I don’t detect any personal animosity to me at all and I think the events of last October don’t rate. They are more interested in how I’ll solve the nurse’s dispute or how I’ll get rid of the crime.

IE: You have a reputation as a master strategist? Was the so-called Inchdoney Conversion (where he embraced socialism) an example of that following the poor local and European election results.

BA: Inchdoney was important. But the switch wasn’t that fundamental. (in 1997), we had gone in with policies to enhance education, services, get more people working, stimulate the economy and growth, bring down corporaton and personal tax, give more incentive to work.
It all us to put more into social policy. We have done a good job in these areas. Let’s put more money into education; let’s put more billions in health.Let’s advance some of the social agenda. I believe we have done that. You could not do that in advance, you could not have done that before you cut income tax and corporation tax.
You would never have had the money.

IE: Speaking of strategy, what Thursday will the election be held?

BA: I never said a Thursday.

IE: You have not decided what day of the week?

BA: I probably have. It’s of no importance whatsoever. My point about the Friday was that with the cleaning of he register, now people are meant to be registered where they are living. That includes students as well. If they are living in Dublin, they should be registered in Dublin
There are tens of people every Friday, working a four and a half day week, who are gone on Friday at lunchtime and do you think they are going to stop for an election?
The fact was that in 2002, they didn’t, they were gone. That’s even more so five years on.

IE: Do you get tired of the media and comedians going too far by parodying you?

BA: No. No. I have a good sense of humour. I have been doing ‘Pub Grub’ (sic) and all of those programmes, breakfast time, all of these programmes have been going on for years and different radio programmes.

IE: Where do you think the election will be won and lost in terms of constituencies. And will Sinn Fein get a lift from the northern breakthrough and the Greens from growing concern over climate change?

BA: At the end of the day, the election is 43 by-elections.
Maybe Sinn Fein will get a lift. I hope we have. I have worked as hard on the North as I could. I gave it the lion’s share of my time and my commitment. You just have to. There are some people who look at the North as the key issue. What percentage of the electorate they are I’m not sure.
People have a general interest but what will swing their vote is a ceist eile.
The Greens are benefiting not from anything the Greens in Ireland are doing and I’m not saying any of this being disrespectful against the Greens. But all over the world the Greens are taking a huge jump except in Germany where the Greens were in power and they got rid of them and they went through the floor.
All of the places where they have never had power, they are doing well.
That’s because you can’t turn on the TV without seeing an ad or seeing somebody going on abut a carbon footprint or a water footprint.
It’s been that way now relentlessly now since last summer and really since the year before when you had all the floods and the mudslides and everything else.
Of course people are rightfully concerned about these issues. We were working away on our recycling programme and the huge things we did on recycling a year ago and nobody would talk about them.
Now, we say something and people say you should have done more.

IE: Are you saying that thee Greens will get a bounce like Labour did in 1992?

BA: Not that big. They are getting a bounce. The premier of Newfoundland was here recently. The Greens were 2% of the vote six months ago and now they are on 11%. This is happening worldwide.
There is no analysis of their policies. I have not read one article.
There’s no analysis of what the Greens in this country stand for on anything.
The Government’s policies will be analysed to death. I’d say they are getting away with that in a lot of countries.
They were down there today (during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil) sneering at our climate change policy. I was shown what they said three years ago. They hadn’t a good idea in the bloody document.
Then we put out a document. Our document isn’t made up. It’s what we have done, what we’re doing.
Ok, there’s no doubt about it (in relation to being 24% over the 1990 level of emissions). You say that’s not good enough. That’s fair comment. I have no problem with that.
These guys (the Green TDs) are down there just chipping way.
Do I believe that for a minute if these guys are in Government they would have an idea, you know what they would do, they would just take all of the ideas that FF come up with because most of the stuff we are doing in Government is stuff that FF scientists and guys have given us. We didn’t find this in the system I can tell you.

IE: You could end up being in Government with them? In any case, won’t it be far more complicated than in 2002?

BA: There could be any series of combinations. To answer your fair question, will the Greens do better, or will they be more significant, it’s obvious the answer is, yes.

INSIDE POLITICS - DUBLIN POLL

We are going to have more opinion polls than Spring showers between now and polling days. The latest one is this morning's from The Star (commissioned from Lansdowne, which conducts our Examiner polls).

The poll was confined to Dublin and had a sample of 500 people across the 12 constituencies (I'd reckon the margin of error is, therefore, in the order of plus or minus four).

Still, like all opinion polls (crude instrument, snapshot etc that they are) the findings are fascinating. Fianna Fail has taken a bit of a hit (down five points to 32 since the 2002 elections) and Fine Gael seems to have staged a bit of a comeback that could see its miserly return of three seats in Dublin rise (but not as much as the party hopes).

Of late, the story du jour has been the rise of the Greens (and you read it here first, a long long time ago). And it is no different here. Five points up. At a heady 13 points only one point behind Labour. That's going to reap a seats bonanza (suddenly Patricia McKenna and Tony McDermott are looking very very good; and you never know, David Healy might be looking like he could squeeze past Larry O'Toole in Dublin North East).

And Sinn Féin? Hard to say. The party will gain, but may only have one extra seat in Dublin when the votes are cast.

A warning though. The findings (bar the FF fall and the Greens gain) are all within the margin of error. And from a stats perspective, there has been little change since then...

SINN FÉIN, AN SIN É?

This column needs to summon every political cliché to its side this week. A week is a long time in politics… we have never had it so good… events, dear boy, events… all political careers end in failure… and all credit to the lad, we're over the moon and sick as a parrot.

And boy do we need them. Two years ago, this column was confidently predicting big gains for Sinn Féin. A year ago, this column was confidently predicting big gains for Sinn Fein. A week ago, this column was confidently predicting big gains for the Greens.

And the obvious corollary? This column is no longer predicting big gains for Sinn Fein.

And now the tricky bit. Explaining it. The easy thing to do would be to borrow the legendary phrase of the Independent former political editor Chris Glennon: "I was right at the time".

But unfortunately easy explanations won't pad out the 500 words or so still left in this column.

You need to borrow another hackneyed phrase - this time from the fickle world of fashion - to explain the phenomenon in the equally fickle world of politics.

Just as cobalt blue (so I'm reliably informed) is this year's black, so the Greens are this year's Sinn Fein, when it comes to being the potential darling of the voters.

Trevor Sargent delivered easily his worst leaders' address at the Ard Fheis last weekend, yet the same political correspondents who gave him 'nul points' for that performance also quickly nominated him as a contender for the politician of the year award.

In the past 12 months, Sargent has brought his party from just north of nowhere to just south of everywhere. The momentum for that upward thrust has come from within and also from without.

The Greens have learned the lesson that to get anywhere, you need to take a bite of a reality sandwich. It has been lucky that its six TDs have high profile, have been identified with tangible issues (it's fatal politically to wholly dwell on the abstract and all its abstractions). The party leadership has also made sure that it doesn't have its hands tied too tightly when it comes to coalition government.

For example, at its Ard Fheis last year, the party didn't adopt Niall O Brolcháin's proposal to make the banning of US military planes from Shannon a precondition of government. And Sargent has been correct in steering the party independently into the election, not getting involved in any accords or alliance, in Mullingar, Mullinahone or in Mulligans, Poolbeg Street or wherever. And he has also been clearer that Pat Rabbitte when reporters put 'what if' hypotheses and suppostions to him.

Outside the Greens, there has been a marked shifting of the ground in the past year. Uncertainty over fuel supplies; a series of scary reports on climate change and global warming; Al Gore's hugely influential documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Yes there has been a dramatic change in the mood, in the zeitgeist. And the Greens will capture that zeitgeist despite the discovery by all the other parties of newfound green credentials.

And what about Sinn Fein. For the first two or three years after the 2002 election, the party seemed to be on an inexorable rise. It got 7% of the vote in the last election but by late 2004 its support had risen to a heady 12% or 13% in some opinion polls

This column has previously expressed its reservations about mid-term polls but it's the only slat tomhais we have. And there were elections too. Sinn Fein did very well in the European elections in 2004. Its southern star Mary Lou McDonald edged out the Greens' Patricia McKenna and Piaras Doherty in Donegal also achieved a massive showing.

The consensus - flouted in this column and elsewhere - was that they could double their seats.

What has changed? The Northern Bank raid and the McCartney murder had a huge corrective effect, as did the party's duplicity over the three eco tourists who were nabbed by Colombian authorities while looking for lesser spotted monkies in jungle that just happened to be in Farc-controlled territory.

Gerry Adams's box office appeal was such that in the south his poster drove the SF campaign down here in 2002, though he wasn't a candidate. He and the SF leadership have a lost a little of that mojo, that star quality since then.

Like Bertie, Adams remains a huge asset but like Bertie Ahern, his star has waned a little with longevity. What he has achieved - and will achieve in the next month- is momentous, and a huge credit to his vision and leadership. But it doesn't compel pencils down to SF on the ballot paper as quickly as it once did.

The five SF TDs in the Dail have been a disappointment overall, though, ironically, all have improved in the last year. They have also started to take constructive positions on issues - the domestic violence motion this week is a case in point - rather than eternally opposing every thing but having nothing to offer themselves.

There are lots of possible gains for SF. In Donegal. In North Dublin. In Wexford. But some of its own TDs are also vulnerable. They once talked about 10 SF TDs or more this year. Now it's closer to seven, maybe eight.

This is my Irish Examiner column from this morning

INSIDE POLITICS - THAT Trevor speech

We all have had a couple of days to reflect on Trevor Sargent's unforgettable speech to his Ard Fheis in Galway.

Sadly, tragically, it just doesn't get any better with the passage of time.

The script was passable, though with far too much name-checking of candidates.

The sentiments were fine, laudable even when he started talking about children at the end.

But the delivery. Jesus Mary and Joseph.

What could you compare it with? Mayo in last year's All Ireland? Ireland's dismal victory over San Marino? Worse if anything. Britney shaving her hair off? That bad.

Sargent bounded onto stage like a tele evangelist. With his arms aloft and booming voice it looked like he could maintain the illusion, perhaps even perform a miracle along the way.

But after that it was downhill for most of the way. There were bits of random roaring followed by bits of speed-whispering, like a racing commentator who has lost his voice. The effect was disconcerting and a little weird.

He rallied a little towards the end. But compared to his strong and even performance in Cork last year, this was not his finest half hour, his delivery being weak and ropey.

When I asked one of his colleagues later, he said that it was probably a mixture of nerves and too much adrenaline and an uncertainty over the timing.


The thing is, however, that it won't make much difference ultimately. Speech-making in Ireland doesn't have the power it has in the US or, arguably, in Britain.

Sure Pat Rabbitte had a great speech this year - it was rightly lauded. But in the normal course of events, a leader does very well if he or she gets through their half hour without fluffing their lines or gaffing or swallowing their glottises.

Bertie Ahern is a poor speaker. His leader's address can be purgatory to listen to. He sometimes sounds like a man who is slowly choking to death. And he is never helped by the script that isn't suited to his style of delivery.

Enda Kenny can be surprisingly good - Kenny's big problem is when he doesn't have a script, or hasn't been fully briefed, and needs to think on his feet.

Gerry Adams is good, though he has an annoying habit of sometimes being ultra patronising, sometimes being cloying sentimental.

Mary Harney never used an auto-cue; she learned her speeches de ghlan-mheabhair - like an actor remembering her lines. That added an edge to her speechifying, made them interesting, unpredictable. Michael McDowell - for all his panache as an orator - delivered a pedestrian first speech as leader this year.

Albert Reynolds was not great either, though his folksiness got him through those long half hours. John Bruton wasn't bad, except for the time Twink spoiled the national conference. Haughey wasn't the Mae West - his nasalised drone couldn't sustain a half hour or hour-long script.

For all his other abilities, Dick Spring was no Bill Clinton when it came to addressing the faithful. The alliterative cluster that comes to mind is dry, drone, dreary, dead.

Either was Michael Noonan whose sharp wit never came out in his leader's speeches, which always sounded creepy enough to come straight from the cemetery.

One veteran Fine Gael TD told me that Liam Cosgrave always sounded and looked like a man who had just swallowed a bottle of rat poison.

Before Haughey it's a bit vague for me. I remember seeing some archive footage of the late Michael O'Leary in the late 1960s or early 1970s; probably before he became Labour leader. He was in full flow and seemed angry, impressive.

Who's good? Clinton obviously. Obama is, definitely. I remember seeing Chris Patten - the Tory Party chairman - speak at one of their Brighton or Bournemouth conference. He was electrifying.

Just a small note on Leaders Questions today. Enda Kenny brought up the results of this survey that suggested that a high number of Irish teenagers have experimented with drugs, tobacco and alcohol (see the debate here).

Leaders Questions allows opposition leaders to ask a question without notice. That means that Bertie Ahern does not have a clue what he will be asked about.

But he has very diligent and very prescient civil servants who prepare for all eventualities. In front of him each day is a big ledger-like book indexed from A to Z. So if somebody is asking him about a relatively obscure subject like a survey on teenagers he just flicks to T for Teenager or D for drugs to find the relevant details.

The most impressive use of the A to Z was when Pat Rabbitte asked a question about a family with autistic children in a week in which they were nowhere near the news. The Bert had the family's case history at his fingertips. It was impressive but also very weird - almost as weird as Trevor Sargent's speech this week.

And just to remind you of Sargent's other great performance this year, here is his unmissable guest appearance on Podge and Rodge.

INSIDE POLITICS - Green Day

WHEN he is droning on and on about biofuels and carbon emissions and global warming and energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, you feel like grabbing him by the lapels and saying: “Bertie, give us a break will you?”


A long time ago, Margaret Thatcher responded to the small threat posed by the incipient ecology movement in Britain by declaring: “We are all green now.”

Of course, the Tories were anything but green — if you were looking for a colour that characterised the 1980s and early 1990s in Conservative Britain it was gun-metal grey.




But it suited the Tories then — as it has suited a generation of politicians in Ireland — to steal some of the Greens’ environmental clothing.

The technical name for that tactic is triangulation. Bill Clinton was a master at it. So was Labour under Tony Blair. In Britain, it entailed taking a Tory policy (on law and order for example) and appropriating the parts most palatable to the electorate.

Blair was then the proud possessor of a policy slightly to the left of the Tory party but way more hard-line than old Labour. The policy appealed to what those very smart people call a wider demographic. The Tories had a choice: be prepared to be outshone by Blair on their own policy; or move further to the right.

They moved out so much, they exited stage far right.

Here, there’s also been a bit of appropriation going on but it’s accelerated from pick-pocketing to grand larceny over the past 12 months.

In the autumn of 2003, I interviewed Green leader Trevor Sargent and put it to him that his party had travelled a fair distance in from the margins of the previous decade. It wasn’t just its growing mandate; it was the tempering of its message. The realos (realists) had prevailed over the fundies (fundamentalists) in the party.

Some of the hard core (and frankly silly stuff) had been ditched: the Greens learned the painful political lessons that come with having no leader; at the maddeningly slow process of arriving at every decision and policy by consensus; about the Grand Canyon-size credibility gap in a policy that says everybody is entitled to a wage even if they don’t want to work.

But Sargent countered by saying that the others had moved out rather than the Greens moving in. His argument was — and still is — they had gradually come to their senses and realised that the Greens weren’t merely odd millennialists predicting the end of the world.

At the same time, he also argued that the other parties had merely scratched the surface and a lot of their “we are all green now” statements lack bite and integrity.

That said, the gavel of auction politics has been busiest when it comes to the environment. The other parties have almost bust the bank in upping the stakes on what they will commit to renewable energy, biofuels, reductions in emissions, and grant-aid for organic, GM-free, vaguely pagan, family-friendly solstice festivals (okay, the last one is a joke).

So what is that about? Instinctively, the more established parties realise that climate, environment and quality of life are no longer staple of “discretionary” elections like the Europeans and locals. That reality has been borne home by a range of reports on climate change and global warming (the UN, Nicholas Stern in Britain); by newspaper reports (floods; tidal waves; only a smattering of snow in the Alps) and by an iconic film like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (getting another showing this weekend).

But another part is “come hither” wooing to the Greens, knowing the party may become a power broker.

And part of it is also triangulation. If the Greens are on the rise, they have to eat into somebody’s votes. Strategically, what the others have tried is to appropriate attractive “green” policies and make the Greens seem unique on only more extreme stances. For example, we have seen alarmist stuff coming from Fianna Fáil and the PDs that the Greens will shut down the motorway programmes. Problem is that a small but increasing number of the electorate is buying into the policies once considered way out there, right on the edge of reason.

Sargent was wrong in some respects. The Greens have mollified too, became more pragmatic. Sargent gets his first moment of live TV tonight for his leader’s address. Expect a mature speech from a leader who believes high office is beckoning.

“They won’t frighten the horses,” said one candidate of their policies in 2002. But they will frighten the mules. Sargent’s party will be one of the big winners this time. “We are all green now!” Right, green with envy!

This is my column from the Irish Examiner

Incidentally, John Gormley and Ciarán Cuffe from the Greens are among the few politicians who keep blogs. Cuffe has recently added filmed segments to his blog, like this one: