Time for new coalition to get on with it

such that, a lot of the time they can’t really get agreement amongst each other, so you can see why they can’t get agreement with us and it is a pity because when you look at the examples of New Zealand and Iceland particularly, we had an ideal opportunity when this thing started to close down our borders around the island of Ireland but didn’t and I think that was a big failing of the political system’.

Looking further down the road, he is confident that the conditions are correct for the Irish economy to bounce back from the shock and lockdown which commenced in March.

‘We’re lucky in that we have the ability to borrow at very low interest rates, so if you take one of the things that are going on in the negotiations for the formation of government and that is to put in a big injection of borrowed money into infrastructure. That is as it should be, because that will create the jobs.

‘It’s not like during the banking crisis when we couldn’t borrow. because every other country in the world is in a similar position. We are probably in a better position to do those things. I think government has to put a wee bit more into small businesses. They’re the lifeblood of our economy, even though we rely very heavily on foreign direct investment from companies outside the country, and at the same time I think this crisis has shown that we need to be as self sufficient as a country as possible in every aspect’

‘I am hopeful that we’ll turn the corner reasonably quickly. I mean I hear all this about another wave and all of that, but I do think we’d be better prepared the next time if it does happen. And that’s why I would be optimistic, as somebody who is somewhat pessimistic in his life’.

‘I think, you know, one of the things that this crisis has brought us all back to is that community and family is so important and it’s more important than, perhaps maybe some of the things that we thought were essential in our life and they’re not’.

Like everyone else he has found lockdown difficult, missing seeing his grandchildren and important milestones in his daughter’s life.

Not an official cocooner, in the plus 70 age category, the 65-yearold says, ‘I have rheumatoid arthritis, so that’s an auto-immune disease, and I’m on medication for that so I’m one of those listed and was advised to cocoon’.

In fact he had underwent a knee replacement operation last December and was cocooning for two and a half months prior to the commencement of the lockdown in March.

‘We stuck to our two kilometres and we went for a walk early in the morning or in the evening and I have to say it was a bit of a benefit for my knee recovery because, I needed to walk a lot in order to get the knee moving, because I hadn’t got a great prognosis after the operation’.

‘I couldn’t meet my grandchildren, which was a big thing. They only live 500 yards from ourselves and would be regularly in our house, nearly on a daily basis and we couldn’t meet them for weeks, so that was a little bit difficult and also my youngest daughter who is a nurse in the Mater Hospital and she hasn’t been home. And in the meantime, she’s bought her house and moved into the house and got engaged, and had her 30th birthday so we couldn’t celebrate any of that.’

GOVERNMENT formation talks need some urgency according to the former Fianna Fail minister as the acting government is losing legitimacy.

‘With no disrespect to Regina Doherty she’s not elected. She is in the Department of Social Welfare which is probably the biggest spending department at the moment and decisions have been made by somebody ultimately who’s not elected. That can’t go on forever, quite a number of the cabinet ministers are not elected, stated the man who is a former Minister for Social Welfare.

‘You know, you cannot continue with a caretaker government for too long because there will be constitutional issues there would be potential challenges, but some of the decisions that you would be making people might have recourse to the court’.

The next government could well see a historic coalition between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the two parties which have dominated the Irish political landscape since the formation of the State, a scenario that he sees as entirely natural.

‘My wife often reminds me, that I’m of a certain age now and that there’s a whole cohort of younger people behind me who think completely differently to me’.

On a parallel track, there are a whole generation of younger people who think differently with regard to Sinn Fein in comparsion to older voters who lived through the Troubles and the IRA campaign of terrorism.

Conceding that Sinn Fein will likely enter government at some point, he says it is not something he could be part of, although he points that there are ‘some very good people in Sinn Fein and let’s be fair about that’.

‘I would have a particular view in relation to Sinn Fein and government and nothing in my life experience I have to say, or my knowledge on government would change that. It’s not something that I would be part of I have to say.

‘ They do complain that, they have a mandate and that’s not been respected but Fine Gael for instance were out of government, when I was in government for 14 and a half years. You never heard them complain, they got more than Sinn Fein got in the recent election, they would have been on 30%. You never heard them complain when they went into the Dáil that Fianna Fáil were ignoring their mandate.

‘ The reality is, our parliament is made up of 160 TDs. If you don’t have the numbers you don’t have the numbers. People often say that politicians don’t keep their promises, well here are promises that both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are keeping as they both said very clearly before the election that they wouldn’t go into government with Sinn Fein.

However the retired politican does fear for the future of both parties, particularly his own with the rise in populism seen here and elsewhere in recent elections.

‘You know, we were criticised in some instance correctly, for what happened in the financial crisis. We took very tough decisions with people around the cabinet table and we knew ourselves this is gonna mean Armageddon for our party, was gonna be the end of our political careers, but we took those decisions knowing full well that they had to be made, and in fairness to the government after that, even though they criticised us in opposition, they did exactly the same and more’.

He fears however that the expected coalition partners will all fare badly as a result of their time in the next government.

‘Sinn Fein, Labour and the Social Democrats will have the luxury of being on the sidelines and attacking everything in order to be all things to all’, predicting that may well lead to a time when those parties will form a government themselves.

‘I remember many years ago at Hillsborough when the reporter Eamonn Mallie, put a microphone on my face when I was in Foreign Affairs Ministers and asked, how can you expect the DUP and Unionists to go in with Sinn Fein, when you yourselves will not go into government with Sinn Fein. I said, I look forward to the day they go into government, because then they will have to make the tough decisions, they won’t be hurlers on the ditch.

‘At the time that was misconstrued, but I was making a point, probably not as well as I shouldn’t, that if and when Sinn Fein get into government we will then see that a lot of the things that they’ve promised are not just achievable and that when you look at their record in the North in terms of austerity measures that some of the promises they’ve made are just not achievable’.

Finally as a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, he simply does not accept the vision for Brexit.

‘I really can’t understand what people were thinking when they decided to go down this route. I mean when they decided to have a referendum, I wander did to anyone in Whitehall even think about the implications on the island of Ireland’.

The ramifications of the UK departure from the EU has not been realised as yet, but he points out that Ireland has lost a natural ally in many tough future negotiations and will now have to forge new aliances with countries that are not as developed as Irish/UK axis for all of it’s pros and cons.