Brendan Hoban: New Government gave open goal to rivals
Western People 4.2.2025 Everything costs something. And elections are no different. The transition from the last government to the next seemed – after a satisfying election for Fine Gael (FG) and particularly Fianna Fáil (FF) – to promise a seamless transition into another Dáil. Even though the former rivals and now casually content bed-fellows were […]
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Western People 4.2.2025
Everything costs something. And elections are no different. The transition from the last government to the next seemed – after a satisfying election for Fine Gael (FG) and particularly Fianna Fáil (FF) – to promise a seamless transition into another Dáil. Even though the former rivals and now casually content bed-fellows were only a whisker from a combined majority, the last step to power can sometimes be unnervingly problematic. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is a universal phenomenon not just a condition afflicting Mayo football – apart from Crossmolina.
And so it was. Against all the odds and all the independents lining up ravenously for power, the FF-FG duopoly made an unholy mess of taking the last jump despite having all their ducks lined up in a row – pardon the lazy mix of metaphors. In politics, as in life, a superfluity of alternatives can sometimes lead to needless debate on a range of possible options. Keep it simple is (in politics and in life) a valued perspective.
The irony is that the FF-FG alliance, a supposedly steady pair of hands with Micheál Martin in pole position, lining up in front of the posts for a casual tap over the bar, managed to take their eye off the ball. A self-indulgent discussion of possibilities – a coalition of two parties, seven independents and a needless addition of two Kerrymen introduced an unnecessary complicated political formula of 2+7+2 – seemed to camouflage a pothole in plain sight.
Even the blindingly obvious fact that the formula included self-inflicted gifts to the opposition in the form of a very confident Michael Lowry (whose track record is problematic at least) orchestrating the agreement and the addition of the Kerry two-some raising a few eyebrows, didn’t seem to matter. Everything seemed grist to the FF-FG mill.
Little wonder then that the FF-FG bandwagon missed the most obvious pothole of all – an unwarranted belief that some of the supporting cast were entitled not just to vote in support of the coalition but to continue as active members of the opposition.
All this and heaven too? What were they thinking? Did they not know that more sometimes means less?
The sheer arrogance of imagining that members of parliament could be riding two horses at the same time – both in government and in opposition – indicates a worrying absence of competence but not of entitlement that will take time to assuage. Almost anyone and everyone could see what Martin and Harris and their advisors had missed with their eyes open. The wound was gratuitously self-inflicted.
For some inexplicable reason, FF-FG didn’t see this one coming and delivered a victory of sorts (as well as giving a new impetus to) People Before Profit’s dream of a left-wing united opposition. The search for a new role, even for a pyrrhic victory of sorts, has given purpose and direction to a medley of opposition parties of all colours and none.
Or maybe not. After an election that delivered at best minimal gains to a few opposition parties and another painful defeat for Sinn Féin, a rag taggle opposition was facing, like Moses, another five years of wandering in the desert. Inevitably, trying to square the round circles of competing political ideologies into a credible opposition takes time but the gift-horse delivered by FF-FG meant that the effort to exploit it was inevitably rushed.
Even though Micheál Martin described the opposition’s response as an organised conspiracy and may seem to be egging it more than a bit, there was a sense that it was coordinated in some fashion by Sinn Féin with its long history of mayhem. Indeed such was the ‘organisation’ of that ‘conspiracy’, Martin could have few worries about another victory in the 2030 general election. Because what we saw on television and what was no doubt transmitted embarrassingly around the globe was an indoor Irish version of Trump’s insurrection of 2020 – without the violence or the deaths.
What we witnessed to our embarrassment and shame was a phalanx of recently elected Irish parliamentarians ‘shouting and roaring’ and trying to be heard above the ‘shouting and roaring’ of their colleagues and a depressing example of what it looked like to see a newly elected first ever female Ceann Comhairle being shouted down and bullied. Stephen Collins in the Irish Times was on the ball as usual: ‘There was something deeply unsettling about all these aggressive politicians baying like a pack of hounds at a woman who was clearly struggling in her new role’.
Adding to the embarrassment of the Dáil, the politicians involved and the Irish people was the fact that the Ceann Comhairle was a woman, the first in the history of the Dáil and on her first outing in her new role, and most of those bullying her were men. The sight of Ivana Batik, the leader of the Labour Party in a supportive capacity to Matt Carty of Sinn Féin, was particularly depressing – so much for the later criticisms of the government as ‘gender imbalanced’.
The storm of abuse directed at the hapless Verona Murphy was a demeaning and grotesque exhibition that not just shamed those directly involved in it but that sullied the reputation of our national parliament. The sight of parliamentarians, almost out of control (or acting as if they were losing the run of themselves) was something no one wanted to see and at times it seemed as if all that was needed was one punch thrown by one individual and God knows what would have followed.
Both the arrogance of the FF-FG government and the torrent of abuse unleashed by a putative opposition braying for blood were inexcusable. The government, depending on a series of wobbly precedents in the main cobbled together by past political chancers, managed to insult the Irish people who had just elected them and the united opposition whose efforts – whether coordinated or instinctive – seemed motivated in the main by electoral disappointment dressed up as outrage. Stephen Collins’ image of a frightened woman surrounded by (mainly) baying, bullying men politicians will remain long in the memory.
