In times past, it would take a few weeks – now we’re set to double the last record of 70 days

IRELAND’s first ever coalition government back in 1948 was a mosaic of five political parties combined with half a dozen Independent TDs.

And it was put together in less than a fortnight, from polling day on February 4 to the formal election of Taoiseach John A Costello on February 18.

As we wait on what is looking like ‘Coalition Number 14’ in the nation’s history, involving three parties, a glance back at the time taken to pull things together will tell us that it has become vastly more complex and time-consuming. Down the years from 1948 to 2016, bar two notable exceptions, it took two to three weeks to make a coalition.

But the last time, in spring 2016, it took three times that average, totalling 70 days of coalition-making in all. This time around – on 126 days and counting – we are very likely to more than double that record span.

We must acknowledge that the role of government has vastly expanded since 1948. That multiplicity of coalition participants – Fine Gael, National Labour, Labour, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmhan, and a motley group of six Independents – really had only two things in common.

The first shared trait was a dislike of Fianna Fáil, garnished in some cases by a personal dislike for its leader Éamon de Valera, much of it arising from the bitterness of the Civil War. The second thing they had in common was a demand for change after 16 straight years of majority Fianna Fáil rule.

Ironically, during the ghastly weather of that winter campaign in 1948, De Valera had stressed the dangers of coalition government. From the backs of lorries across the country, he belted out the view that “weak coalitions” in Europe over the two previous decades had brought democracy into disrepute, and “cleared the road for dictatorship”, which in turn led to war.

Clearly, voters ignoring the election clarion call of a Taoiseach is not a new phenomenon. In fact, De Valera had assumed after the election result that he would somehow form a minority administration, and he was flabbergasted at the speed with which he had to clear his desk and leave Government Buildings for a three-and-a-half year sojourn in Opposition.

Those Fianna Fáil warnings about the perils of coalitions – the word was rarely uttered without the qualifying adjective “weak” – persisted for decades later.

But such injunctions were heard less and less after July 1989 when party leader Charlie Haughey breached a “core value” and shared cabinet with the breakaway

In 2016 we had ‘the election nobody won’

and sometimes hated Progressive Democrats. Despite breaching a “core value”, and bringing into government Des O’Malley, a man he railroaded out of Fianna Fáil just four years earlier, the historic coalition deal was done in 27 days. That’s not much more than a week or 10 days over the previous average.

The stand-out exception to coalition-making time taken was in the winter of 1992/1993 when it took a total of 48 days for Fianna Fáil and Labour to do a deal. The then Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Albert Reynolds made a woeful miscalculation in forcing a general election in November 1992 after a bitter dispute with Progressive Democrat leader Des O’Malley. Reynolds and the party suffered a big reverse. But the assumed “rainbow coalition” of Fine Gael, Labour, Democratic Left and Progressive Democrats never happened for two reasons. First was the Fine Gael objection to Democratic Left matched by Labour’s objection to the Progressive Democrats. Second was a bad history of relations between Labour leader Dick Spring and Fine Gael leader John Bruton.

Things drifted over the Christmas holidays towards the first ever unlikely Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition. Given the failure of the first deal, the Christmas hiatus, and other factors, a 48-day timespan now seems perfectly reasonable.

The failure to make a “rainbow coalition” in 1992 is really the only failed coalition making effort to date in this country. And in fact we did get a rainbow government two years later in late 1994.

This time the bizarre collapse of Albert Reynolds’s coalition with Labour, amid arcane cases of child-abusing priests, led on via a series of strange twists, to the only change of government in our history to happen without a general election.

In December 1994, Spring and Bruton – enhanced in Dáil numbers by some by-election wins – did manage to get over themselves and put together a three-party coalition with Democratic Left.

The making of the Fianna Fáil-Green Party coalition in June 2007 is often evoked amid current negotiations again involving the Greens. But it is notable that this took just 21 days, including a Green walk-out, and a hiatus in talks.

In 2016, we had “the election nobody won”. More than half the vote went to smaller non-traditional parties and groups, there was a minirevival for Fianna Fáil, and a serious drubbing for the exiting government parties of Fine Gael and Labour.

It took 70 days to put together a minority Fine Gael government, combining Independents, and ruling by grace of Fianna Fáil.