Fianna Fail has influence but it carries a price tag
The main party of opposition is trying to look responsible and yet fight off Sinn Fein as well, writes Kevin Doyle
FIANNA Fail is not afraid of another general election but it doesn’t want to cause it. Having relocated from its recessionary bunker to the moral high in the wake of February’s vote, Micheal Martin and his TDs are performing a delicate balancing act.
On one side there have been populist pronunciations such as their now total aversion to water charges and demands for a €5 pension hike in the Budget.
But on the other side they want to be seen as mature and responsible at a time of great political uncertainty all over the world.
On Tuesday, they will underwrite Budget 2017 with a level of ease that didn’t seem possible during the often fraught negotiations over their ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with Fine Gael.
It won’t be because they believe Enda Kenny has actually pulled together a functioning government that can solve the crises in health, housing and education.
They will sign off on the €1.2bn package because it’s the right thing to do, right now, for themselves and for the country.
“The alternative to a Budget being passed is another general election with months of uncertainty at a time when the country needs stability,” said Fianna Fail’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath.
“That’s not to say that we will agree to the passage of a Budget at all costs. We are not afraid of an election but we don’t believe that parties should sleepwalk into one because they are afraid to take on responsibilities.”
Those ‘parties’ he refers to are Sinn Fein and the Anti-Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit, and to a lesser extent the Labour Party, Social Democrats and Greens.
When McGrath takes to his feet on Tuesday afternoon to give a rebuttal to Finance Minister Michael Noonan, his scripted attacks will fly more towards his rivals on the Opposition benches than the Government.
He will talk about how Sinn Fein shirked the chance of going into the room and forcing Fine Gael to change its bad habits.
He will claim credit for bringing Fine Gael’s budgetary policy in a “new direction” with the 2:1 split in favour of spending over tax cuts.
And the mild-mannered Cork TD will accuse Gerry Adams of having taken a 10-week holiday while Fianna Fail ensured that a second election wouldn’t be necessary.
Finding a way of attacking and defending the Budget at the same time won’t be easy though.
McGrath and the party’s public expenditure spokesman Dara Calleary will have half an hour each to speak. That’s a lot of air time to fill.
That’s why for some months Fianna Fail has strategically been laying the groundwork for budget day.
The three-point plan goes like this:
1. Secure enough wins to be able to claim credit for the good things.
2. Leave a few obvious gaps so that they can point out what they would have done better had they “actually been in power”.
3. Create a narrative that they are acting in the most responsible manner possible.
The first part has been achieved. They won out on inheritance tax, forcing Mr Noonan to raise all three taxfree thresholds by 10pc.
Tax on savings will fall slightly, against the minister’s wishes too.
And there will be €15m for the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to help reduce hospital waiting lists.
Of course Fine Gael will claim that it would have done some of those measures anyway
‘They want to turn education into the new health. There’s a logic to the idea of moving on from the smoking ban’
but the row will be lost in the haze of Budget Day announcements.
The second part of the Fianna Fail plan is slightly trickier, because the complaints cannot be so grievous that it would feel obliged to bring down the Government.
As a result it has cherrypicked fights in specific areas, with housing and education likely to be the biggest.
Fianna Fail does not like the tax rebate for first-time buyers which will see househunters receive up to €20,000 from the Government to help them secure a deposit for a new build.
“Our key concern is that it will push up the cost of new homes. There should be a full impact assessment carried out,” said cGrath, before adding: “It’s not something we will be bringing the Government down on.”
If the plan fails to stimulate the market, then you can expect plenty of “we told you so”.
The other key line of attack is likely to be education.
Over recent months, Fianna Fail has made a concerted effort to turn education into the new health.
There’s logic to the idea. Martin made a big play on the state of the health service during February’s election campaign, but it was too easy for others to point to his fouryear stint as minister between 2000 and 2004.
After all, it was under his watch that the HSE was established. And there comes a time when people tire of hearing about how great the smoking ban is.
But Mr Martin is on more solid ground when it comes to education.
His party has demanded that an extra €100m be injected into the struggling third-level sector.
They want guarantees around school buses, money for post-graduate grants, a flood of guidance counsellors and a reduction in pupil-teacher ratios.
It’s one area where Fianna Fáil can confidently turn up the rhetoric, such as during Leaders’ Questions a fortnight ago when Martin warned the Taoiseach: “It behoves us to act now, in the next two to three weeks, to make a serious provision in the Budget for expenditure for third-level education.
“Otherwise we are ignoring the future of this country at our peril.”
And then there is Brexit. It plays nicely into the third element of Fianna Fail’s plan to be seen to “pull on the green jersey”.
A briefing document compiled by the party last week notes Ireland needs to navigate “these increasingly choppy geo-political waters and do what is right for the people on this island.
“We will continue to bring forward constructive policies rather than join the protest of Sinn Fein and other extreme left-wing groupings,” it says.
Yet the difficulty facing Fianna Fail shouldn’t be underestimated. The media and the public has been slow to buy into ‘new politics’, and it runs a major risk of being outflanked by Sinn Fein in the coming days.
Already there has been a row with RTE, after Prime Time suggested it wanted Pearse Doherty to be the voice opposing Michael Noonan on Tuesday night rather than McGrath. So what’s the end game? Well, ultimately Fianna Fail wants to get over Tuesday unscathed and in a position to really start thinking about an election.
While some described a mid-week opinion poll showing a 7pc drop in support for Fianna Fail as a reality check, I would argue it has reassured Martin and his strategists that their wait-and-see approach is the best one.
In an ideal world, the Independent Alliance would pull the rug or some unmanageable scandal like the Garda whistleblowers controversy will bring the House crashing down while Enda Kenny is still at the helm of Fine Gael.
Fianna Fail is ready to pounce but doesn’t want to strike too soon.
“This is not about opinion polls. If this was about opinion polls we’d have pulled the Government down long ago,” said Michael McGrath.
Fianna Fail has influence, but no more than the €5 pension hike, it comes at a cost.