It’s clear some politicians still just don’t get it
SOME good news at last. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have kissed and made up after both parties threw an almighty strop over the weekend, which threatened to plunge coalition talks into disarray. What was this unseemly spat about? Divergent theories about the manner in which the pandemic should be handled? Concerns about the ever-increasing backlog of patients requiring non-Covid treatment in hospitals? Alarm that the unemployment rate has soared to 28pc in less than two months?
No. Some Fianna Fáil TDs got the hump because Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, quite sensibly, instructed his officials to start making contingency plans for an election during the coronavirus crisis.
Barry Cowen said the revelation “smacked of bad faith, selfishness and putting party before country”, while Thomas Byrne upped the ante by labelling the plans “utterly sick”.
Instead of ignoring these overwrought comments from a couple of loose cannons, Fine Gael opted to release a cringe-inducing press release to announce to the world that its feelings had been badly hurt.
The “unwarranted attack” by the Fianna Fáil terriers had “damaged the talks process”, which had been “going well” up to that point. Peace talks between the party leaders were eventually held on Monday morning and a nation held its breath until another press release confirmed they were all friends again.
Does either party have any idea how badly these juvenile melodramatics go down with a public which has seen its entire world upended since March?
The expectation had been that 2020 would be a relatively good year, with the economy set to grow and hopes that the housing crisis would finally be dealt with.
Instead, people are grappling with serious illness, death, unemployment, job insecurity, loneliness, fear, confinement, and a range of mental health issues.
Meanwhile, our politicians, who have not managed to form a government more than 100 days after the election, are engaged in handbags over barbed tweets.
There is a sense, still, that certain politicians just don’t get it. They have yet to comprehend the enormity of what is happening and are continuing with politics as usual even though the world has been utterly transformed.
For instance, last year the government spent €2.4bn on housing programmes in an effort to ameliorate one of the biggest societal problems facing the country. This year, we will spend nearly half of that amount, €1bn, on personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers – a statistic that gives a stark indication of the crisis we now face.
After the financial collapse a decade ago, the Fine Gael and Labour government had to find a way to reboot the economy. The challenge facing the incoming government is much greater.
To a large extent, they have to reinvent the economy – because certain sectors are never coming back or will have to completely transform the way they operate.
The caretaker government put in place a range of temporary emergency measures to deal with the acute phase of the crisis.
The new government will have to devise strategies to help the country chart its way through this morass before we hopefully exit when a vaccine is found.
Despite the length of time the parties have been wooing each other, nothing much has been revealed about their plans.
We all know what the Green Party is advocating behind closed doors, but what radical ideas are Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil proposing to help us weather this storm?
To date, the issue that seems to most preoccupy Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil members in interviews is the question of who will be Taoiseach first, Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin – something most of us couldn’t care less about.
Meanwhile, the Department of Social Protection will reach its legal spending limit in a few weeks, State funding for public transport services could run out in June, and sections of anti-terrorist and anti-crime legislation are set to lapse next month.
The house of cards is beginning to crumble and the only ones who can prop it up are in no apparent hurry to get a deal to form a government over the line.
As it stands, the country is largely being governed by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), whose recommendations the caretaker government simply rubberstamps.
That was a sensible approach in the early stages of this crisis, but as the public health crisis morphs into an economic and societal crisis, a government needs to be in place so that political decisions can be taken and legislation passed.
At the moment, there is stasis and confusion. People in receipt of the pandemic unemployment supports have no idea how much longer they will last; small and medium business owners are unsure if they will ever be able to reopen their premises; those working in the health service have no idea how they are going to cope with the twin demands of treating Covid and non-Covid patients; and parents have been left in the dark about the possibility of childcare, or state education, returning any time soon.
As well as these problems, the country is still in the midst of a housing and homelessness crisis, which is going to be further exacerbated by the havoc wrought by the virus on the construction sector.
The challenges the next government will face are huge, but there will also be opportunities.
Our entire society and way of working can be reimagined, with a focus placed on quality of life. All we need are politicians with the vision to make it happen. Engaging in petty spats over juvenile comments doesn’t instil much confidence that we have them.