WE’RE ON BRINK OF A WINTER ELECTION
FF insists Tánaiste must go but Fine Gael backs her all the way at late-night party meeting
THE country stands on the brink of a Christmas general election over the whistleblower crisis.
Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were last night digging their heels in over the future of beleaguered Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald. Amid fears of an unwanted winter election campaign, the Irish Daily Mail now understands that Fianna Fáil will table a motion of no confidence in the Tánaiste today.
The party is demanding her scalp in exchange for continuing its Confidence and Supply agreement with Fine Gael.
However, the Fine Gael party held
‘Bid to rush through the Finance Bill’ ‘We won’t throw her to the wolves’
an emergency parliamentary party meeting at 10pm last night at which a motion of confidence in the Tánaiste was put by Leo Varadkar, which passed to applause.
Separately, predictions on an early election are already under way in Leinster House and sources have told the Mail that Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is trying to fast-track the Finance Bill – which gives effect to Budget – so that it will be brought in before the feared collapse of the Dáil.
A Fine Gael source last night said Ms Fitzgerald’s error was not that serious, adding: ‘[This] has all the hallmarks of a fiasco, largely down to the incompetence of officials in the Department of Justice.
‘Frances has done nothing wrong, other than forgetting an FYI email from two and a half years ago. [It’s] not right or just to throw her under the bus to feed the wolves.’
The Taoiseach told last night’s meeting that Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin were looking for a head and that he was not going to give it to them. He said that he was standing up for standards in politics.
And in an attempt to force Fianna Fáil to back down, sources told the Mail that the Taoiseach was due to travel to Africa next week, but that the trip has now been cancelled. They said he had 12 bilateral meetings booked with heads of EU states as part of the trip, meetings that were crucial in the Brexit talks, and would now not happen.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney also came out fighting and said: ‘Fianna Fáil are calling for a resignation built on sand. We are still not fully sure what she is being accused of. This is Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin competing with each other.’
However, Jim O’Callaghan, the Fianna Fáil justice spokesman, said his party leader Micheál Martin had exercised a clause in the Confidence and Supply Agreement they have with Fine Gael, whereby any difficulty operating it would try to be resolved ‘by the two leaders speaking together’.
He added, on RTÉ’s Six One News yesterday: ‘This is an event that has undermined the agreement. The likelihood is that there will be a vote. Similarly, we may put down a motion and we have until 11am [today]. We do not have confidence in the Tánaiste and we won’t be voting confidence in her. Obviously, this is the most serious event that has happened in the course of the Confidence and Supply Agreement. When we negotiated it, we recognised that events like this could happen, and for that very reason we put this clause in.’
The issue goes to the heart of Government stability – because Dáil support for Leo’s administration is grounded in Fianna Fáil supplying confidence in such votes. Should Fianna Fáil table its own motion of no confidence in the Tánaiste – or indicate it will support Sinn Féin’s motion – it would almost certainly tip the country towards an election, unless Ms Fitzgerald resigns.
The latest twist in the whistleblower row had been gathering steam since the Taoiseach told the Dáil, on November 15, that the Justice Department had no prior knowledge that former Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan’s legal team would attempt to undermine whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe’s at the O’Higgins Commission.
He added that the Tánaiste ‘told me that she had no hand, act or part in this decision and that she was not aware of it until after the fact, around the time it entered the public domain’, in 2016.
But on Monday night, it emerged that the Tánaiste had received an email about the commissioner’s strategy a year earlier, in 2015.
The opposition has claimed that Ms Fitzgerald, who was then justice minister, should have warned Garda chiefs not to take such an aggressive stance towards Sgt McCabe.
However, Ms Fitzgerald said the email gave her legal advice that she should not interfere. The revelation forced the Taoiseach into correcting the Dáil record.
Mr O’Callaghan told the Dáil yesterday that he had a ‘strong suspicion’ that efforts were being made to suppress the email. But Ms Fitzgerald hit back: ‘There were no efforts to suppress that email, by me. There were no efforts to suppress it. I am speaking for myself. I don’t believe there were by other people either.
A chaotic Christmas election would wreak havoc with the economy and the Taoiseach’s showdown with Britain in Brussels next month on whether Brexit can proceed to Phase Two.
There is also mounting pressure on the Independent Alliance, with opinion poll support for Independents haemorrhaging in recent weeks, and beset by the Mail’s revelation of their proposed self-indulgent trip to North Korea.
Last night Shane Ross failed to reply when asked if his bloc – which is equally vital to the maintenance of the Government – would go to Leo seeking the Tánaiste’s head.
Fine Gael and other sources reported last night that there had been ‘cheering and roaring’ in the members’ bar when Mr O’Callaghan announced Fianna Fáil’s uncompromising stance. Many in the party actively want an election, with Fine Gael keen to blame them for it if it should now come about.
The Government will supplant a motion of no confidence with one instead expressing confidence in the Tánaiste – if it comes to that.
Mr O’Callaghan revealed there was a telephone call between Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar on Wednesday night in which the Fianna Fáil leader made it clear he could not support Ms Fitzgerald’s continuation in office. He said: ‘He (Martin) indicated that Fianna Fáil no longer had confidence in the Tánaiste. We’re not in the business of issuing ultimatums, but it is the unambiguous view within Fianna Fáil. We will be voting no confidence in the Tánaiste.’
The two party leaders could continue to meet, he speculated. ‘They could resolve it. I don’t think anyone wants a general election.’ – neither Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin or Labour – but there is a serious issue.
‘We bear no grudge against the Tánaiste and we are not in the
business of throwing people to the wolves.
‘This is now a matter for the Taoiseach.’
Mary Lou McDonald had earlier told the Dáil that efforts had been made to destroy the reputation and the life of Sgt McCabe. Hours later the Sinn Féin motion of no confidence was down.
It might have been always coming anyway, but Minister Fitzgerald’s rambling answers to Ms McDonald may have sealed the situation.
The Sinn Féin TD said it was very strange that people would be sharing information with a person who could have ‘no hand, act or part’ with it, once received.
The email was about a criminal allegation that had already been disproved the previous year, but was now going to be used as a weapon against Sgt McCabe.
‘Why did you stand idly by as the plan unfolded?’ she asked. ‘Reading the email or not reading it is frankly unbelievable,’ she added.
She told the Tánaiste that she might think she had weathered the storm, ‘that she will ride it out, but she will not – because the terrible vista of a conspiracy to malign a good man, to smear him in order to shut him up is not some minor political episode that can be simply brushed away.’
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