Enda Kenny can offer little to others until FG and FF speak

The excitement and the fanfare of the Easter Rising commemorations over, it was back to business at Government Buildings yesterday.

In Washington a fortnight ago, acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny joked about not wanting to come home to face the process of government formation. Many a true word, etc. How do you put a government together when you don't have the numbers?

Kenny and some of his Ministers met 15 Independent and Green TDs, resuming the process that stuttered fitfully into life last week. But where exactly is this process going?

The participants in yesterday’s meetings exchanged views on a number of topics – housing, rural development, mental health. All attest to the fact that constructive talking is going on, and sources say they are finding agreement in many areas.

This is not surprising; the people in the room are mostly centrists of one stripe or other, hardly ideologically incompatible, and documents are being drafted to stress common ground.

Atmosphere of negotiations

Most of the Independents want to be part of a government, and

Fine Gael

needs them. But, in truth, the negotiations are taking place in a more than slightly unreal atmosphere.

They all know the numbers, and the conclusions they impute. This reality overhangs everything going on in Government Buildings.

There can and will be no government that commands a consistent majority in the Dáil without the combined will of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that it should be so. If they cannot agree on this, there will be another general election.

That is perhaps the starkest fact of the entire process of government formation.

It does not render meaningless the discussions at Government Buildings between Kenny and the Independents. But it does mean they cannot be in themselves conclusive. And it is the nature of politics that most business is done at the concluding stage.

Strains showing

For all the common ground its participants are so keen to stress, there are some signs the discussions are straining under this reality. At yesterday morning’s meeting, Independent TDs told the acting Taoiseach he needed to open discussions with Fianna Fáil, and several have said so publicly in recent days.

Kenny’s reply was that he wanted to conclude matters with the Independents before taking that step. Some Independents wonder what they are doing at all if everything agreed is subject to review. Others sense the danger of returning to power a Fine Gael administration supported by a quarter of voters, led by an unpopular taoiseach. Many want the political cover that Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael talks would afford.

There is no formal proposal for those talks to start, let alone for the shape and tone of them. But they are inevitable and, behind the scenes, both parties are preparing, urgently. Some high-ranking sources expect contacts between the two in advance of the weekend. That will be when things get really serious.