And so it starts. The terms on which the two party leaders will rotate as taoiseach is appearing as the first hot-button issue in the talks on government formation between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, soon to be followed by who gets what ministerial jobs.
There are important things to be discussed and decided if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are to make a go of the next government, along with a third party or parties. Whether Micheál Martin is taoiseach for two years and seven months or two years and 10 months is not one of them. It may be important to the faithful who shuffle in to the TV shot behind their leader as they do interviews at party conferences – looking suitably serious – but it doesn’t matter a whit to the rest of us.
If this initial skirmish is a sign that – after a performative row – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael think that business as usual is going to cut it, then the next government will quickly end up in trouble. Perhaps it is all just a bit of noise to keep the backbenchers happy and some real work is starting behind the scenes. Because to have a chance of success, those forming the next government need to accept two things and come up with a way to deal with them.
First, there are the risks – the really serious threats coming down the line – and a strategy is needed to limit the damage to Ireland’s economic model. This is embodied by Donald Trump’s entry to the White House, but is also part of a wider story in which the globalised economic model from which the State has benefited so much starts to fracture.
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Second, the outgoing Coalition’s delivery in a lot of key areas was simply not up to scratch – housing, health and infrastructure were three key areas. Whatever was said on the general election campaign trail, an acceptance that public service delivery needs to be transformed is essential. Otherwise the Opposition benches will shoot towards an open goal and public frustration will grow, with unpredictable political and social consequences.
The narrative is that people voted for the status quo. And in terms of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leading the next government they did. But that doesn’t mean they think everything is grand. From the giant national children’s hospital project to the tiny Leinster House bike shed, to the ongoing housing crisis, public faith that the Government can deliver has been shaken.
And in a State where the coffers are rich due to corporate tax receipts, there is just not the required urgency to get things done. All the planning, administrative and legal issues that lie behind this will not be solved in a few weeks of negotiating a new programme for government, but this document must outline a pathway to transforming the delivery of public services and investment. Accepting that things have not been operating as they should have is the vital first step to this.
The outgoing Government was able to paper over the cracks because it had vast amounts of money at its disposal. The next administration is going to have to fight to hold on to what Ireland currently has; Donald Trump’s tax and tariff policies pose an imminent threat to our economic model. The odds are that the resources available to the next administration will tighten significantly during its term.
It is impossible to judge how quickly trouble could hit. But given that corporate tax revenues have trebled in a decade, the odds are they we are now near the peak – and at risk of a fall. The latest exchequer returns published this week, if you subtract the Apple money, show corporation tax this year will be just a little higher than 2023. The vast sums of money at play here – more than a quarter of total tax revenue – mean that protecting as much of the multinational tax haul as possible is simply mission-critical for Ireland.
Serious strategic thinking is needed about how Ireland approaches this in the short term and – crucially – how to react if corporate tax revenues are hit. And beyond that the State needs to focus on what it can offer in future and how to overcome shortcomings in infrastructural areas such as energy provision, water and wastewater, which are already having economic and social consequences.
The climate transition is central here. If Ireland sees its future as an investment hub offering clean energy, then the State has to get a lot smarter and quicker in delivering wind energy and vital grid infrastructure improvements, not only to attract investment but also to reduce emissions.
For energy projects – as well as water and transport – a hugely complex planning and administrative process needs to be streamlined and sped up. The same applies to housing, where judges rather than planners are making far too many decisions on a narrow legalistic basis because that is, after all, what they do. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the national interest is being lost.
The processes needed to improve all this are vital, as they are in delivering public services such as health more efficiently and generally getting decisions made more quickly across the public service. There are some hints of thinking on this in the election manifestos, with Fine Gael calling for a department of infrastructure and Fianna Fáil wanting the National Treasury Management Agency to take control of big projects.
Whatever way this falls, the essential issue is not the nameplate on the door of the taoiseach’s office at any given time; it is introducing new project management and engineering skills into the system as quickly as possible and finding ways to speed delivery across the government and local authorities.
Injecting new thinking and energy into tackling these issues early in the next government’s term is vital. And a new programme needs to set a pathway to do this. A commitment to deliver, say, 50,000 new homes a year will be pointless without outlining how that will be done. We can only hope that behind the negotiation on the taoiseach’s chair and the ministerial posts, there is a realisation that for the next government to have a chance of success, it cannot simply continue on its merry way exactly like the last one.