“Putting the country first may well mean we would be better in opposition, by far….People feel it is going to be hard to drive the government and that, therefore, the people we represent might be better protected by leading the opposition.

“I think there is a strong view along those lines.”

Broughan is the first high-profile TD to publicly oppose a Coalition, though Labour Youth President Colm Lawless Councillor Cian O’Callaghan, Blanchardstown Councillor Patrick Nulty and the UNITE union have also come out against:

“”I’ve been talking to Labour party members across the country, grassroots members, councillors, and I’m also aware that a number of TDs in the party have some strong reservations about the potential for a Fine Gael-led government,” the Howth/Malahide councillor said.

“You can be absolutely certain that you’re going to see a very strong, vigorous and healthy debate on Sunday and we’ll wait to see what the outcome is.” (Cian O’Callaghan)

“I fear that Labour’s influence will be minuscule and that we are about to allow Fine Gael a free reign on introducing harsh austerity measures which will hit ordinary people hardest..I fear that Labour’s influence will be minuscule and that we are about to allow Fine Gael a free reign on introducing harsh austerity measures which will hit ordinary people hardest,” said the Trinity College Dublin student.

“Fine Gael do not rely on Labour to remain in office and this is a serious concern…In the case of not holding a balance of power it is wise for us to remain in opposition.”

Mr O’Callaghan said four TDs had personally expressed their opposition to him about a prospective coalition.

“Unite has campaigned during this general election for a Labour-led left government…We were promoting that our members would vote for the Labour Party; we wanted Eamon Gilmore as taoiseach.” (Jimmy Kelly, UNITE Regional Secretary)

“If a programme for government is put to Labour members, I believe we should reject it and instead put the country first and push for . . . transformation in our political system” (Councillor Patrick Nulty)

“Meanwhile, Labour Party MEP Proinsias De Rossa has said his party should be prepared to go into Opposition.

In a statement, Mr De Rossa said that Labour should defend the interests of its core constituency – low and middle-income earners – by having key elements of its social democratic policies implemented.

He said that if Fine Gael did not accept these requirements, Labour should not enter a Coalition.” (RTE)

Meanwhile, FG’s Immigration and Integration Spokesperson Lucinda Creighton has called for the party to sound out Independent TDs as her supporters were rejecting Labour, “higher taxes” and “going soft on cuts”:

“People voting for me and voting for my colleagues were coming from Fianna Fáil and PD backgrounds. They were voting against Labour and against higher taxes and going soft on cuts. We will be punished if we were to say we would not try to see if there were other viable alternatives”

Creighton’s stance comes amid tensions over the next occupant of the Department of Finance and contrasts with FG Grandees who have largely dismissed a deal with “flakey” Independents. This is in spite of a public offer from Dublin South poll-topper Shane Ross TD for an agreement with up to 8 Independent TDs. Among Independents who might be prepared to support a FG-minority government are Noel Grealish (publicly pledged for vote for Kenny as a “West of Ireland” Taoiseach, former FG TD Michael Lowry, Michael Healy-Rae, former FF TD Tom Fleming, Luke “Ming” Flanagan (who claims to agree with many FG policies), Stephen Donnelly (backed by David McWilliams in Wicklow), former FF TD Mattie McGrath and Shane Ross. Neither of these constitute part of the Leftist-bloc of ULA or SP Independents. An alliance with FG would produce 84 seats and allow FG to reward impressive performers who played a decisive role in shaping policy and building the foundations for the party’s spectacular gains which have made the party – for the first time in Irish political history – the largest in the State. A Coalition with Labour, in constrast, is likely to require the sacrifice of up to 6 Cabinet seats – possibly including the ‘Holy Grail’ of the Department of Finance. With double the seat numbers of Labour, the surrender of the most powerful position at the Cabinet (arguably more so in a Coalition than that of Taoiseach) would raise the spectre of a repeat of the unpopular 1982-7 FG-Labour Government where the senior party was abandoned en masse in the succeeding General Election as conservative and libertarian FG voters defected to the PDs, depriving the party of one-quarter of its vote and consigning it to 22 years (consecutive apart from an interlude in 1992-4) to the political-wilderness.

Any Coalition agreement will have to be ratified by Labour’s Special Delegate Conference and by FG TDs and Senators. Unions will have 10% of the votes while Labour Youth will havd 45 votes at the conference.

Yet within an hour of the Taoiseach’s unscheduled Thursday statement to the Dail (Thursday being his privilege day regarding Dail appearances), the website had up this portion of his remarks –

The Government has obtained approval for its National Recovery Plan, provided a proper funding of the State through their negotiation of the EU-IMF package. It will give us the time and space to continue on a path of adjustment to restore economic growth and thereby create jobs and it will allow us to bring our public finances back to order while providing necessary public services to our people.

There is absolutely zero news content to those remarks.  There is no new approval or announcement and it sells the IMF/EU package as an achievement and not the culmination of 2.5 years of attempting to avoid exactly that outcome.   With an election date now announced, you’d hope that a period of purdah would now cover official government information sources.  They’re off to a bad start.

We believe that there is a clear duty on all members of Dáil Éireann to facilitate the passage of these measures in the uniquely serious circumstances in which we find ourselves. The political and financial stability of the State requires no less.

So again ministers who couldn’t have cared less about the Dail in the day-to-day running of the country suddenly want all its members aboard for a budget which they have no hand in creating.  Perhaps if you like parliamentary government, it should be seen as a good news that the days of the country being run through social partnership meetings and quangos have been put to one side.   But is it really the function of the parliamentary opposition to wait every 2 decades until the country is in a real shambles and then be called upon to vote with Fianna Fail for the sake of the country?   If, as periodically comes up for discussion, you take the view that there’s a dearth of talent in Irish politics, it doesn’t help when that’s the basic job description.

Development and implementation of a centralised Identity Management Solution. This will require legislative provision. It will provide –
• System to facilitate online authentication of individuals to access all online public services requiring authentication of identity
• Facility to look up persons and find related records
• PPSN validations
• Reference matching of a large quantity of records to ensure that they are correct

Leave aside the consultant-speak — in which a system becomes a Solution(TM).  Focus on the promised capability. How will the state do online authentication without some form of common identity document? This is not the same as online account management, where you’ve already agreed to do business with the counterpart and been able to prove who you are.  This is bigger and more ambitious — and no doubt more costly.

Prediction: The consultants brought in to shop this one have already settled on a name for the new system: e-IRE.

MANY IN Britain, who came through the harrowing years of war, the London blitz, the struggle to defend against invasion and the eventual defeat of Germany, recall the period as one of great personal fulfilment and satisfaction. British political parties set aside their differences and formed a national government of unity for the duration of the war. The prime minister’s inspired leadership rallied people to the cause; the parliamentary routine of peacetime was abandoned. A united people responded to the challenge and, under conditions of great hardship, contributed to the war effort and ultimately took satisfaction in the successful outcome.

If this is meant as an analogy to Ireland’s current situation, it’s a very incomplete one.

Here’s the thing: Britain’s National Government was formed in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, not with the onset of the World War II.  Here’s the relevant Wikipedia entry and the key thing that comes out is that while economic crisis did produce a durable national government, it didn’t produce consensus.  Instead, 2 of the then big parties (Labour and Liberal) had splits, while over time the government became a Tory Plus model, albeit with hybrid policies, for example austerity also with protectionism and devaluation.

So in the Irish case, if FF saw salvation (i.e. a chance at staying in power) coming in the shape of Labour and FG endorsement, which parties would be most likely to split and whose policies would emerge from the sausage grinder at the end?

And incidentally, when a true national unity government was formed in 1940, the one that Walsh has in mind, it involved the resignation of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.   It’s hard to see Irish politics producing an admission of failure.

It will be a challenge, and equally an opportunity – an opportunity to dramatically accelerate the pace of change in the Public Service, to the benefit of all stakeholders. And an opportunity to ensure that the Public Service continues to contribute to our return to economic prosperity. These are opportunities that we need to embrace with, to borrow from Seamus Heaney, “a compound of energy and artifice”.

 Brian Cowen, giving one of his early-Taoiseach speeches to the Institute for Public Administration conference on “A Public Service for the Future: The OECD Challenge” (remember that?) in May 2008 –

I want the Irish Public Service to be an exemplar of success; ‘fit for purpose’, performance-focused, integrated, and citizen-centred.  Perhaps the most challenging of these attributes is ‘integrated’.  In the words of Séamus Heaney, I believe this will require ‘a compound of energy and artifice’.

 The man sure loves that Seamus Heaney quote.  At least when the topic is transforming the public service.

More seriously, at which speech did he announce that his task force on transforming the public service had hit the ground running so well that it had already had its first meeting?

Both of them.

(Thanks to Conor for providing a graphic of my figures).

One was that O’Dea’s role as a minister was irrelevant to the case.  This is just factually wrong.  The source of the row was Maurice Quinlivan’s original claim that O’Dea is using 6 civil  servants that he gets as a minister for constituency work, including for matters that are the domain of local government.   And of course, as the Opposition pointed out, this all took place in the context of a race for elected office where council is the stepping stone to the Dail.

Second, Cowen (presumably correctly) pointed to the fact that Ireland has no perjury law.  It is only governed by common law.  So in the past year, not to mention the past 5 years, Dermot Ahern has found time to pass a blasphemy law and get working on one for begging, but not formalise the law governing sworn statements to a court.   Even the Tribunals of Inquiry have somehow found a mechanism to penalize untruthful testimony, although some bright spark might now be wondering whether there is scope for a legal challenge to those findings. 

Incidentally, the Taoiseach today announced that Catherine McGuinness will spend another year as President of the Law Reform Commission.  Maybe suggesting a perjury law should the first item on her extended agenda.

The Government has already decided to impose a levy on incineration. The legislation to allow for this is being drafted and will be before the Houses of the Oireachtas in the early part of this year.

Although this proposed bill does appear in the Chief Whip’s “long list” for forthcoming legislation, it was not deemed important enough to get mentioned as a highlight, and the government has a long record of overpromising on legislation.  In any event, with Gormley essentially in open warfare with Dublin City Council and at least one other authority having “gone rogue” (DDDA), it’s not clear how much time he’d have to pilot through the legislation.