Pat Leahy: What is this Government actually for, beyond not being Sinn Féin?

There are many political disadvantages to being in government. You get blamed for lots of things, even when some of them are not your fault. People expect you to fix things they don’t like, and get disgruntled with you if you can’t, won’t or don’t. This is one of the reasons Ireland has unusual numbers of politicians who do not really, if they are honest, wish to be in government. Or at least, they do not wish to be in government in any circumstances that are remotely imaginable.

These include some politicians who are among the most vocal critics of the current Government, such as several Independent TDs, and the People Before Profit deputies. The Labour Party and the Social Democrats did not exactly cover themselves in glory after the last two elections either, making little or no real effort to contribute to the process of government formation.

Mary Harney once told then Green Party leader John Gormley that the worst day in government was better than the best day in opposition. His experience in the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition of 2007-11, when the country experienced the worst financial crash in the world, would certainly test the veracity of that.

Gormley told me this week that Harney’s dictum was true from June 2007, when the coalition with Bertie Ahern was formed, until September 2008. “But September 2008 to February 2011 wasn’t exactly a normal period in government,” he said. He can say that again.

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But there are big political advantages to being in Government, too. Most significantly, as averred around here before, Government retains the ultimate political tool: the power of executive action. In other words, the Opposition can just talk. The Government can do things.

[ Inside Sinn Féin: Who really makes the big decisions in Ireland’s most popular party? ]

But capacity is one thing; the will to act is another. The current Government finds itself in the fortunate position of having the financial resources to achieve many policy goals. What it often seems to lack is a sense of mission and urgency to do it. As the Coalition eyes an election that could well take place in just more than a year’s time – or, depending on whom you listen to, in six months – it seems less consumed by a determination to get on with the job and achieve results before that election and more cowed in the face of the relentless challenge from Sinn Féin. Many of its members and supporters share a timorous sense of fatalism about its own prospects. Whatever the opposite of having the bit between your teeth is, this looks pretty like it.

Even some members of the Government find it equally odd and inexplicable. Part of it, says one Minister, comes down to a lack of a coherent common agenda. Every Minister is working away on a variety of issues. It’s not that they are not busy; they are. Talk to any Minister and that is readily apparent. But there is a lack of a central theme, or animating purpose. What is this Government actually for, beyond not being Sinn Féin?

“Can you name me three big ideas that the Government is working on?” asks a Minister. “I can’t. And I’m in it.”

Another senior figure reckons that the only way to combat the alluring message of “change” from Sinn Féin, is to have “ideas”. But the Coalition is hardly fizzing with them, is it?

[ Fintan O'Toole: Sinn Féin has come a hell of a long way. But it had a hell of a long way to go ]

I spent a chunk of summer of re-examining the Bertie Ahern years for a podcast series you can find on irishtimes.com (or wherever you get your podcasts, as they say). There are many lessons we might discuss. But one of them is that governments tend to be more successful when they are animated by clear ideas and focused on making progress on specific goals. For example, whatever you think of it, Charlie McCreevy’s extraordinarily bold tax-cutting in that government’s first term gave it a signature project and distinct identity. It would be hard to say that the current administration has anything remotely similar.

By contrast, if Sinn Féin projects a hunger for power and impatience for office, it is because the party is clearly itching to do things with that power – such as trying to achieve a united Ireland. Say what you like about the credible proximity of that project and the rather significant hurdles that must be overcome if it is to be first achieved and then made a success of – but you can’t doubt Sinn Féin’s determination to work towards it from day one in office.

[ Who is Fianna Fáil for? A dwindling, increasingly regionalised demographic ]

The Government often projects the opposite of this sense of mission. True, this often happens to parties after a long spell in power; they just run out of steam. Maybe that is inevitable for this Coalition. Fine Gael, never previously in office for two consecutive terms, will next time ask voters for a fourth. Perhaps its chief task is to convince itself, rather than the voters, that it deserves another go.

For most of our history as an independent State, Fine Gael periodically gave Fianna Fáil a break from government before, after a few years, power reverted again to Fianna Fáil. But that arrangement ended with the financial crash; now the two old rivals must join their forces to retain power. But every democracy needs an alternative and the shrinking of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has left that role to Sinn Féin. It is this, more than anything, that makes the advent of a Sinn Féin-led government – maybe next time, maybe the time after – look inevitable. Unless the current Coalition can remake the political narrative through its own actions, unless it can rediscover some forward momentum, centred around a small number of big ideas and signposted by meaningful progress, that outcome is likely sooner rather than later.