Shouting ‘shame’ won’t solve health crisis – FG, FF and SF are there to govern

FINE Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, it’s time to use the power the people have given you. Much angst has been spent since last Thursday, following the jousting that went on in the national parliament during the speeches to elect a taoiseach. The national sport of rerunning the election campaign permeated all sides of the Dáil, with the new Ceann Comhairle, the level-headed Seán Ó Fearghaíl, trying manfully to remind the excitable deputies that they were voting to elect a taoiseach, not touting for votes.

Of course the reality was that the Dáil ballot was nothing but an elaborate charade; a game played to essentially buy more time before the real negotiations begin.

However, this is a strange political game because there are essentially only two players, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

All talk of a Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil-led minority government that doesn’t have some sort of binding agreement by both parties is pointless. Such a government would fall and pretty quickly at that, as it simply couldn’t govern effectively knowing that the main opposition party would seek to bring it down at the earliest opportunity.

This patently obvious political fact is copper-fastened by the approach of the putative third player in this game, Sinn Féin, which refuses to have any input into government formation at all. How could we have any form of stable or good government – and there is a difference – if the largest three parties in the Dáil, holding 116 seats between them, won’t negotiate on forming one?

A clearly animated Pearse Doherty made a passionate speech on Thursday decrying the shameful nature of the health and homeless crises that infuse this State. And he is right; these are truly shameful crises. Yet Sinn Féin refuses to do anything about them, instead piously declaring that it is going to keep its promises to the electorate not to enter government with either of the two larger parties.

The fine words of Doherty will be of no solace to those affected by homelessness or on trolleys all across the State’s hospitals, but they will make Sinn Féin feel good about themselves.

The leadership of Gerry Adams was extolled by all the Sinn Féin deputies when he was nominated for taoiseach, but wouldn’t it really be a striking example of Deputy Adams’s leadership capabilities if he lifted the phone to both Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin and said: ‘We in Sinn Féin are willing to support you in government or even coalesce with you if we can agree a platform to fix the health service and end homelessness.’

After all 20% of the voters said the health service was the issue which most influenced their vote. There is, alas, no chance of this happening and Sinn Féin can remain pure in spirit as it waits to form a government, which could well be a long time coming.

For its part, Fianna Fáil seems to be suffering from a dose of post-election stage fright now that the public want to see a government formed. Micheál Martin is right when he says that he has no mandate to either govern in coalition with Fine Gael or prop up a Fine Gael government. But Charles Haughey had no mandate to go into government with the PDs in 1989 and Dick Spring had even less of a mandate when he brought the Labour Party into government

FF seems to be suffering post-election fright

with Fianna Fáil in 1992, having lacerated the soldiers of destiny for the previous three years.

Why did both Haughey and Spring cross their own respective Rubicons? They did so because they knew that to get things done they had to be in power. Power and what to do with it should be the overriding concern of all politicians in these strange post-election days.

This is not power for its own sake but power to make decisions that will affect people’s lives and essentially improve this state for its entire people.

John Bruton forgot this truism when in 1992 he refused to have any dealings at all with Democratic Left and was then left both flummoxed and stunned when Dick Spring went into government with the Albert Reynolds-led Fianna Fáil. Bruton didn’t make the same mistake two years later when the Reynolds-Spring coalition imploded and instead he formed a government with Labour and Democratic Left.

The reality is that no political party in Dáil Éireann has a mandate to govern with any other political party, except for Fine Gael and Labour, now that the PDs no longer exist.

In that context it is incumbent on Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to form some sort of government. Sinn Féin should also be willing to get in on this act but will prefer to salve its own conscience.

Sitting on the sidelines, however, shouldn’t be an option when the game’s stakes, that of producing a better Ireland for all its citizens, are so high.