The Green grassroots are wilting – so will SF be the only solution to stagnation?

ATUMULTUOUS week in politics has cast doubts over whether any programme for government plan can get the backing of the new and volatile Green Party membership.

The week began with senior figures in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael trying to mend the damage from the now-infamous ‘election plot’, which saw contingency plans being drafted to hold an election during the current pandemic.

By the end of the week, contingency plans of a different sort were beginning to be formulated.

On Tuesday, talk of a heave against Green Party leader Eamon Ryan emerged after a letter from four Green councillors was sent to deputy leader Catherine Martin urging her to contest the leadership of the party.

The letter was not quite a nailing of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses moment, but it certainly brings to the surface what had been simmering underneath since the election.

Many of the younger members of the Greens want reformation in the party and have been vocal in their opposition to the prospect of being tarred with any brush associated with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.

The timing is unfortunate but of course deliberate.

Deputy leader Ms Martin does not represent a total sea change in ideology.

That role belongs to Dublin Central TD Neasa Hourigan, who will back Ms Martin in the leadership contest, but who Ms Martin knows will be a threat to her claiming the leadership should she hold fire until after the next election.

WHILE Ms Martin has said she will give serious consideration to contesting the leadership, she wants it to be done after government formation talks – the discussions both she and Ms Hourigan opposed entering in the first place.

Sources in both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are concerned the new and perceived hard-left wing within the Green Party will vote down any programme for government deal. The size of this vocal and busy online brigade has so far been hard to gauge, but will become apparent when the vote on a programme for government is cast.

‘We might have red smoke instead of Green coming from Ag [Agricultural] House yet,’ said one Fianna Fáil TD this week, in reference to attention potentially turning to the Labour Party as the uncertainty around the Greens grows.

‘One thing is for sure: [Labour leader] Alan Kelly will have a much bigger price if we have to go back to him, as will the Independents,’ they added.

There is also a fear among Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs that the ten new TDs in the Green Party don’t have the ‘resilience’ to weather the tough political times that lie ahead, which will lead to an unpopular government making necessary decisions to get the country back on track. ‘Labour have been there before, they know what it takes to make tough decisions. I’m not sure if some of the new Green TDs do,’ the source said. One thing is certain. Should the current talks fail, the options for a next step are very limited.

An election simply isn’t possible – and even if it was, recent examples in Israel and elsewhere show that they often don’t yield significantly different results.

While Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has himself previously made that point, there are some in Fine Gael who feel they could win a few more seats if there was an election in the morning.

And so, the stars are starting to align for Sinn Féin to be brought to the table.

In Israel, after three elections, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and their sworn enemies in Benny Gantz’s Blue and White have broken the deadlock to form a government, following a stalemate of more than a year-and-ahalf, and a succession of coalition negotiations that fell flat.

Mr Gantz ran a campaign that focused on ending corruption within government at a time when Mr Netanyahu had corruption charges hanging over him – which still haven’t gone away.

‘The government corruption has become a strategic threat to Israeli society and its democracy,’ reads a page from Mr Gantz’s party’s manifesto.

The brutal election campaigns saw Mr Netanyahu’s party run a series of attack ads on Mr Gantz which claimed he was a security liability and a weak leader.

After exhausting all options, the pair finally succumbed to the unpalatable option of forming a coalition together – not before a Supreme Court challenge threatened to derail it, on the basis that Mr Netanyahu is facing criminal charges.

Whether Sinn Féin’s involvement becomes a requirement or not, the absence of a government is increasingly evident as each week passes.

This week it is the inability of Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe to pass legislation that would allow some women who went off the payroll but were due to come back from maternity leave to get access to the Wage Subsidy Scheme. This is something the Taoiseach says the Minister for Finance is exploring solutions for.

THE continuing Leaving Certificate debacle is another prime example. The expertise of staff in the State Examinations Commission cannot be drafted in to the new process of grading for this year’s Leaving Cert, which is not actually a Leaving Cert. Instead it is a ‘State equivalent’ to the Leaving Cert, which will require new legislation by the next government to grant it the same status as the Leaving Cert.

Staff from within the Department of Education will form a new unit to work on the predictive grading process without the input of the State Examinations Commission, all because of the inability of the Dáil to pass new legislation.

The more time that passes, the higher the price will be for political stagnation.

Should the current talks fail to produce a government, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could very well be left with no alternative but to bring Sinn Féin to the table.

We are today 105 days without a government; let’s just hope it doesn’t take more the more than 500 days it took the Israelis to realise that sometimes the unpalatable solution is the only workable one.

The Greens’ plan for energy is from the dark ages