Putting the tough question to Micheal Martin
In an extensive interview, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin tells Philip Ryan he believes he can work with Leo Varadkar in government
‘I enjoy public service, I enjoy politics. To me, 12-hour days are just the norm’
‘I think the bottom line here is Covid-19 presents opportunities’
MICHEAL Martin is in great form as he comes bounding across the back lawn of Leinster House to pose for some photographs before sitting down for an interview with the Sunday
Independent.
You get the impression he may have got some good news or he knows more than he’s telling about government talks. Perhaps his day has finally come, and, after 31 years in politics, he may finally become Taoiseach.
He didn’t want to pose for photographs outside Government Buildings because that would come across as a bit too presumptuous on his part. So the Leinster House gardens are the compromise.
As Mark Condren’s camera clicks, Martin realises the backdrop is the 60ft obelisk that serves as the centrepiece to the manicured lawn. “I shouldn’t say it, but you know who that’s for,” he quips.
The towering structure is a memorial for Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. The latter was murdered by anti-treaty republicans supported by Eamon de Valera during the Civil War. The war created the political divide between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael that has survived to this day in Irish politics.
But the Civil War, which developed into a long-running phoney political war, may be about to come to an end.
And Martin could even be in the Taoiseach’s office on the centenary of Collins’s death in August 2022. *******
Philip Ryan: Will you be the next Taoiseach?
Micheal Martin: We have to get a programme for government first, that’s our first priority. We had a breakthrough when we agreed the policy framework document and the other breakthrough was the meeting where I met Leo Varadkar and we agreed Fianna Fail and Fine Gael would work with an equality of respect for each other — that’s the guiding principle.
PR: Has he cleared the way for you to be the next Taoiseach?
MM: I’m not going to go there now.
PR: Do you ever worry that you won’t become Taoiseach?
MM: It’s not about me being Taoiseach.
PR: A bit of it is.
MM: It’s not.
PR: Come on.
MM: When I took over as leader of the party in 2011, I didn’t see it at all. We had 20 seats, we were very poor in local government because of the 2009 election. So, genuinely, I have a philosophical approach to life. I enjoy public service, I enjoy politics. To me, 12-hour days are just the norm.
PR: But to put all that work in and not to have achieved the end goal would be difficult.
MM: I would like to be back in government to get things done. I’m of the school of politicians that does not want to be on the sidelines all the time, who wants to get on and play. Play is the wrong word but get in there and get things done?
PR: Get on the pitch and score?
MM: Yeah, score a few goals and get things done — and we can get things done.
PR: If you do eventually get there, how would you like to be remembered?
MM: I do want, in the next two-and-a-half to three years, for people to say, “this government changed my experience. As a person, as a citizen I have a stake in society, I’ve been given a stake in society. My quality of life is better. I can now realistically get a house or afford to get in a house. Be it a council house or be it a house I can buy at an affordable price. I can get the treatment when I need the treatment and my child can get a place in school”.
It is only after listening back to the hour-long interview that Martin’s use of the words “the next two and a half to three years” sticks out. It sounds like a clear indication he will be serving as Taoiseach first in any rotating arrangement with Leo Varadkar. But how that relationship will work is anyone’s guess.
PR: You’ve called Leo Varadkar arrogant, nasty and obsessed with spin. How do you box that one off and deal with someone you’ve had all those issues with?
MM: The way you box those issues aside is you’ve got to get a programme for government that is visionary, that will transform society. You’re not doing press releases, you’re actually saying we’re going to change the experience for people in terms of housing, in terms of health.
PR: To do this, you’re going to need a good relationship with Leo Varadkar.
MM: Yes, and I think the programme for government can be the unifying piece.
PR: But what has bridged that gap?
MM: I think the programme for government can.
PR: But you’ve made a huge leap of faith here on a person you’ve had such difficulties with and who you campaigned against for four years.
MM: Necessity demands that we do work together. I think the people out there have very little tolerance for party self-interest, for parties just playing games. I get criticism at times that I don’t look at it from a party self-interest point of view.
PR: But what was the key moment when you thought ‘I can trust Leo Varadkar and I can trust Fine Gael to form a government’?
MM: The key moment here has been the decision to sit down and engage in putting up a joint framework document. Up to then it was generalised talk. There were people in Fine Gael saying we don’t want to go into government, we want to lead the opposition.
PR: Those people are still there.
MM: Yes, but I mean, in reality, politicians need to realise, I include myself, outside of this bubble in Leinster House, outside of all the talk, there is a general public who are struggling with Covid-19, to put it mildly. People have lost their loved ones. They’re very worried about their senior citizens. They’re very worried about jobs. There’s a million people depending on some State payment. They realise this is big global pandemic creating huge uncertainty. PR: OK.
MM: Sitting down together, working through the framework document and getting that published has been the catalyst that may or may not lead us... we’re not there yet.
PR: When did you decide you could do this?
MM: I don’t know if there is a magic moment.
PR: There has been huge animosity there over the years.
MM: My policy in politics is that I don’t get personal. I’ve always maintained good personal relationships with people I oppose politically throughout my political life. Even, you know, for the last three to four years, I have held my word in terms of Confidence and Supply. Didn’t get too much of an electoral award for it but the bottom line is we held the line.
PR: There’s plenty of resistance in your own party to the deal, too.
MM: It is difficult. I’m not going to pretend it’s not. A lot of our people find it very difficult and a lot of our party find it very difficult in terms of going in with Fine Gael, and I acknowledge that. My view is that in the aftermath of the election there was an obligation on us to do it, and to do what’s right for the country.
Because there are two types of politicians, right, there’s those who are in this for the political game almost, or the political jousting, or there are politicians who are here to sort of say ‘look, what can I do, what can I advance, what can I get done’.
PR: I’m guessing you’re number two.
MM :Iam.
PR: Is Leo Varadkar in category one or two?
MM: I’d like to think he’s number two, yeah. Eamon Ryan certainly is. I think he was good in government because he had things to do. He had an agenda, he had a mission. He wanted to do things, he wasn’t hanging around. And any minister in a government department shouldn’t hang around.
Martin is very keen to convince Eamon Ryan and the Green Party to join Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in government. Throughout the interview he praises Ryan. He is also eager to show off his own climate change credentials. He’s a big supporter of investment in cycle paths, greenways and public transport. He even travelled to Denmark recently to examine their world-leading windfarm industry. The Danes set up an agency in the 1970s called State Green with the long-term objective of banning fossil fuels. They no longer import them and hope to ban any domestic production by 2050.
PR: But how are you going to achieve the 7pc-a-year cut in emissions the Greens are insisting on?
MM: I think the bottom line here is Covid-19 presents opportunities. Unparalleled opportunity. It’s a crisis, but with crisis comes opportunity. In that context, to me the opportunity arises in housing, it arises in health, and it arises in the Green New Deal.
PR: Denis Naughten [the former Climate Change Minister] says you’d have to take every car off the road to achieve 7pc a year.
MM: No, we won’t be taking everybody off the road.
PR: But how do you get the 7pc?
MM: Take remote working for example. If you could get 30pc of people remote working, that would have a dramatic impact on congestion and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. That’s just one area. We have to aim high.
I think already in year one, with the impact of Covid-19, there has been a dramatic decline in emission of greenhouse gases, not just in Ireland but globally, so I think actually year one does have a fair chance of being able to achieve it. It is very challenging.
PR: It is still hard to see how you can hit that target realistically.
MM: We need to be in a frame of mind that says ‘what is possible’, and go for it. I remember the famous quote from John F Kennedy, that famous speech he gave when he said “we can get to the Moon in a decade”. No one believed in that at the time, but he did and America did.
PR: Do you predict difficulties in working with the different factions in the Greens?
MM: All parties have different views. Some keep theirs more internal than others but, anyway, that’s healthy at one level. They have a very consultative model, and a participatory model, which conventional parties are developing but the Greens kind of started. I think we have to learn to live with different approaches and different mechanisms, because there are eight grouping now in Leinster House.
PR: Why did the election go so wrong? Was it because of your stance on the State pensions age and a rent freeze?
MM: In 2016, we came in under the radar. We were very much front and centre in 2020. So I think we became a target very early on and I think we took a view on the budget that we felt attacks would come if Fianna Fail was seen to be profiting from the budget so we took a relatively conservative fiscal position and got sandwiched in between the two and then Fine Gael was relentlessly attacking Fianna Fail.
PR: And it had an impact. MM: We were checking up to the last two or three days and TDs were comfortable and saying they didn’t see their position in trouble and I think we lost about 2pc to 3pc in the last two or three days — that’s what caught us.
PR: Some of those issues I mentioned are not raised in the framework document you agreed with Fine Gael. The issues of rent freeze and the State pension age, neither of those are addressed.
MM: At the moment, the rent freeze issue is dealt with in terms of the legislation. PR: For three months. MM: But I mean I think rent is going to come down.
PR: Look on Daft.ie, I don’t think rent is coming down.
MM: I think ultimately the housing market will change. I think that’s why it presents an opportunity to us in terms of the housing issue but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away as an issue. I think the second issue you were saying was the retirement age. That will have to be dealt with in the programme for government. PR: What is your view? MM: Our view is 65.
PR: The State pension at 65?
MM:
That’s our view, I think Fine Gael have a view of 66.
PR: That’s different from your view during the election.
MM: We said 65 in the election.
PR: I think you said there would be a transition payment after 65.
MM: After 65 yeah, but essentially people would get a pension — it will be called a transition pension but you’ll get a pension at 65. I did say we do need to work out longer term what we need to do.
PR: But you do want to stick at that?
MM: That has to be worked out now, that’s not final.
PR: The pension age is 66 at the moment.
MM: Yeah, but it was to go up.
PR: Yeah, to 67.
MM: Yeah, and that’s not happening now. I think there’s agreement on that and that’s not happening. I think the programme for government will have to specify that and that’s a matter for discussion between two parties.
PR: And that will be one of the key issues?
MM: It’ll be an issue. The key issues are housing, health.
PR: It must be difficult being so close to Government Buildings but being one step removed from the decisionmaking process during the Covid-19 crisis.
MM: I accept the reality of where I am. I don’t unduly dwell on that. I feed in and I ring people directly if I believe there is an issue.
PR: Do they listen?
MM: Sometimes, not all the time.
PR: You ring the Taoiseach presumably?
MM: Yeah, or I ring the Minister for Health or I ring the Minister for Finance if I have an issue. I’m very conscious that when I make an observation it is taken seriously because of where it is coming from in some respects.
PR: Are politicians and public health officials on a collision course on the social distancing restrictions?
MM: No, we can’t afford to be on a collision course.
PR: But you have to balance the health, mental health and economic sides of this debate.
MM: We all have private views. We feed them in. I would have rang the chief medical officer myself, I would have rang the minister, I would have rang the Taoiseach on Patrick’s Day, for example. I would have given my views privately. I didn’t go publicly shouting from the rooftops, even though my TDs wanted me to, but I felt that was the wrong approach.
PR: As in to close things down?
MM: Yeah, make sure St Patrick’s Day doesn’t happen. PR: OK.
MM: I would have had a view that when people come back from northern Italy in the beginning, that on a precautionary principle they should not have been allowed back into school. That’s a view I had, I said that.
PR: That didn’t happen though, did it?
MM: No, they were allowed into schools.
PR: What should have happened with Cheltenham?
MM: It shouldn’t have gone ahead.
PR: But what could we have done here?
MM: We could have asked people not to go. But I would say the most important thing to do when it’s over is to evaluate, not have inquiries, because we need people to operate in a crisis without looking over their shoulder. And there is a danger... we have to trust people in a crisis and in an emergency.
PR: There are a lot of expectations around the restrictions being lifted on May 5.
MM: I think we can refine what we’re doing a bit. So is the 2km written in stone? What is wrong with somebody who’s a walker or a hill-walker who’s going five miles on their own and meeting nobody in the wilderness. And what is wrong with a fit over 70-yearold going outside their house for a walk. And, again, with masks if necessary. I mean, that’s going on in other countries. In Singapore, they’re all wearing masks.
And sometime around the middle of June, perhaps, Martin will finally be wearing the Taoiseach’s crown.
Martin likes being the underdog but, going into the General Election, Fianna Fail were the frontrunners. The informed speculation was the party would edge out Fine Gael and go on to form a coalition with smaller parties. But Sinn Fein’s impressive performance threw that off course.