Tomorrow the 34th Dáil meets to elect a new taoiseach. Once the vote is confirmed, Micheál Martin will travel to Áras an Uachtaráin to be officially appointed by President Higgins. Later in the day the new cabinet will be similarly approved and appointed.
The protocol of the day reflects the gravity that attends the transfer of power in a democracy. It is regrettable that the solemnity of the occasion contrasts with the unseemly manner in which this new government has been assembled.
The central involvement of Michael Lowry is the first signal that all is not well. Micheál Martin and Simon Harris were both present in 2011 when the Dáil unanimously accepted the findings of the Moriarty tribunal that Lowry’s actions as a Fine Gael minister during his handling of the competition for the State’s second mobile phone licence had been “profoundly corrupt”.
Lowry rejects that finding, but has never legally challenged it. And it remains the official position of the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the matter. Yet both have been happy to deal with the Tipperary North TD in his role as chief negotiator on behalf the Regional Independents Group (RIG). Neither appears to see the glaring inconsistency.
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There are no constituency deals in the Programme for Government agreed between the two large parties, the RIG and the HealyRae brothers; such an arrangement would be illegal. But briefings from those involved in the negotiations indicate that there is an “understanding” that local projects favoured by the Independents will be taken into account during an upcoming revision of the National Development Plan. There is also a “feeling” that local health projects will be addressed in the next HSE service and capital plans.
It is worrying that the politics of nod and wink have embedded from the start at the heart of this government. Public pronouncements from its ministers on the integrity of the national spatial strategy and healthcare policy should be therefore treated with scepticism.
For Martin, Harris and their respective parties, it seems, such arrangements are a pragmatic reflection of political reality and a logical extension of previous more ad hoc arragreements.
But unwritten political commitments of this sort are an affront to good governance and accountability. Their extension to a larger group of Independents from a broader range of constituencies risks contamination of the entire national planning process at a time when the State is about to embark on an ambitious programme of investment in infrastructure.
What guarantee do voters have that decisions taken during this government’s term of office will not be skewed as a result? None.
That amounts to a deeply unsettling start.