A far-fetched option? A way to get us out of this mess, but “let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes”....
As Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael scramble around looking for a means of producing a formula for stable government, the challenge is their inability to coalesce for historical, cultural and other reasons, not least the former's "solemn" pledge to their voters not to do so.
But there is, some 60 miles up the road in Belfast, a model for producing a government between deeply incompatible partners which perhaps the Dublin neighbours should consider.
Sinn Féin, the DUP, the SDLP and the Alliance Party all coexist in cabinet together in a system based not on “coalition” but “power-sharing”. It’s an arrangement that allows each party to preserve its independence and ideological purity, and nevertheless to engage in no end of mutual recrimination, while sharing out portfolios between them according to a formula that reflects individual parties’ numbers.
It is ungainly and, in truth, does not function very smoothly, particularly at budget time. It is also mandatory, the product of a brokered peace agreement – and so is no-one’s preferred option. But it does work.
And each of the parties is able to look its voters in the eye and say plausibly that, no, they have not sold out to the historic enemy. They are sharing power, not coalescing.
The NI Assembly even has a method for appointing a cabinet – D'Hondt, a voting system shared with Belgium, which effectively allows each party to pick cabinet positions in turn, from First Minister down, much like school children pick sports teams, allocating each party a number of jobs and places in the team-picking order according to their respective political strengths.
The central weakness of the system is undoubtedly the challenge of enforcing a degree of cabinet collective responsibility, and there also has to be a mutual acceptance that ministers will be relatively more independent. Imperfect as it is, however, power-sharing is not coalition.