THE third banking force was "the only decision this Government has funked" because the Coalition parties could not agree on it, the Minister of State, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said in Dublin yesterday. "Every other decision we were presented with, we made it."
He said it was an idea "espoused by Ruairi Quinn in opposition". Fine Gael does not agree with it, and Democratic Left has a fundamentally different view.
It was "not feasible to force the ICC and the ACC into some kind of merger. They are incompatible, and their staffs are inveterately opposed to it."
The Minister, who was addressing the Association of European Journalists on the subject, "Is Socialism Dead?", also warned that the neglect of the "under class" in the economic black spots such as in his own constituency in west Tallaght, where there is a 66 per cent unemployment rate, could lead to rioting as in Toxteth in Liverpool, if neglect continued.
"Few enough politicians and fewer still senior civil servants or journalists know what daily existence is like in the economic wastelands we have created in urban Ireland." The unemployment and drugs problems in these areas were becoming "a nightmare" and the drugs menace was "far more serious than the authorities were admitting".
Asked about the likelihood of a left wing party Taoiseach some time in the future, Mr Rabbitte said it was "very slim". We were into the "era of coalition government".
As far as he could judge, we were going to have either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael "in a leadership position" in future governments.
But the dynamics of a government were not just conditioned by who was the leader of a government. In a Fianna Fail Democratic Left government, DL might not seem to have much influence, but the Progressive Democrats had shown they had economic and other kinds of influence in coalition.
In the present Government, the dynamics were essentially a "50-50 arrangement" between Fine Gael and the two left wing parties. The dynamics "do not necessarily hinge around the position of Taoiseach, which is clearly very important in terms of leading the Government" and "an important capture for his own party". But it was not the only thing that made up the dynamics of the Government.
He said he did not believe there would ever again he a single party Fianna Fail government.