It felt like an earthquake, so why are voters altogether unmoved?

A year on from Election 2016, it’s time to accept that the ‘new politics’ experiment has got us nowhere, writes Kevin Doyle

AYEAR ago today, readers of the Sunday Independent woke up to a headline that screamed: ‘A political earthquake’.

The front-page story described how, after a “disastrous” campaign, Enda Kenny’s chances of becoming the first Fine Gael leader to head consecutive governments were slim.

For Fianna Fail, the ballot had marked “a milestone in a remarkable resurgence”, while for Sinn Fein “it did not live up to its expectations”.

However, we are older and wiser now, having witnessed Mr Kenny spend 70 days finding a path back to power.

And people are unconvinced by the ‘new politics’. One in three people now say it has been bad 12 months for Irish politics, while a similar figure say it has been “indifferent” at best.

A Sunday Independent/ Kantar Millward Brown opinion poll asked voters how they viewed the political year since the election.

Just one in five rated it positively and, perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of those were resident in Dublin where the economic recovery is ongoing.

Given that they eventually got back into power with the highest number of Cabinet seats ever, it’s not surprising that Fine Gael voters were the most positive — but even they struggled to describe it as a good year.

On the flip side, Sinn Fein supporters were the least happy, but Fianna Fail voters weren’t too far behind.

Micheal Martin is holding all the power without actually having to govern and yet 39pc of his supporters think it has been “a bad year”.

But perhaps the most telling statistic from the poll is that 37pc are “indifferent” to the whole set-up.

This suggests that at a time when politics across the world is being rocked by unorthodox results, people here are losing interest.

It’s a worrying trend, but not surprising, given that the ‘earthquake’ has actually led to paralysis.

Our inability to shake up the system is outranked only by Fine Gael’s inability to get rid of Mr Kenny.

In spite of losing more than 250,000 votes since 2011, he fumbled a government together and handed out jobs for the boys like the boom days.

It’s hard to think of any standout moment for the minority administration since its establishment.

The most notable achievement is convincing the public that setting up endless committees and commissions of investigation is “fair” and “transparent”, when really they are little more than a symptom of the paralysis. Kick the can down the road and put off the inevitable election that is needed to clear the air.

Fianna Fail has, for its own reasons, decided not to take Fine Gael off life support, allowing the party to suffer the indignity of imploding.

And because so little legislation is actually being produced, the people who moan about everything have been given extra Dail time to moan about everything.

A year on, two significant questions come to mind. First: is the fact that nobody, including the media, wants an election enough of a reason not to have one?

It seems obvious the ‘new politics’ experiment hasn’t worked, so we should go back to the drawing board and try again.

But the problem is attached to the second question: If you could go back to February 26, 2016, would you change your vote?

The polls suggest that some people would swing from Fine Gael to Fianna Fail, but not in sufficient numbers to allow for an old-fashioned coalition government.

We could end up with a role reversal, as Micheal Martin takes the Taoiseach’s chair, while the new leader of Fine Gael pulls the strings.

The indifference being felt by people is probably fed by this belief. There is an attitude that one crowd is as bad as the other crowd.

It’s up to our political leaders to find a way of making our system work.

The two civil-war parties need to start considering the possibility of a grand coalition in the future.

Sinn Fein needs to stop crowing from the sidelines, tidy up its internal affairs, get rid of Gerry Adams and allow TDs to speak freely without fear of reprisal if they stray from the official script.

The AAA-PBP needs to learn to compromise and build relationships, while Independents need to decide whether it’s about the parish pump or national progress.

Last week the impressive Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was in Dublin for a series of meetings.

By the time she rocked up to a breakfast event at legal firm Matheson, she had already been out for a run around the capital with “a fit garda” to see what she described as a city on the up.

Australian politics has been through a decade of instability with four elections, heaves, counter heaves and confused results.

Yet when asked about the turmoil, Ms Bishop laughed, saying, “Sort out your own house before you talk about ours.”

The deputy leader of the Liberal Party did offer some insight into her experience though, suggesting that “populations around the world have felt a sense of alienation”.

“The lesson for governments around the world is to remain connected to the concerns of people,” she said.

Fine Gael admitted after last year’s election that it hadn’t been listening to people, particularly in rural Ireland.

Today’s poll suggests those people still feel unheard, with 46pc of farmers saying the last 12 months have been a bad time for politics.

Ministers argue that they are offering stability and doing their best in testing times to hold it altogether. But the definition of stability is not as simple as just having a government, especially at a time of crises in health and housing.

If people are ‘indifferent’ to politics, it suggests they see it as irrelevant. That’s a dangerous place.

Ireland is not standing still, so neither should Leinster House.