If Cowen and Gormley are to survive together they must improve their political game, writes NOEL WHELAN
ALMOST 20 years ago, when I first worked in Fianna Fáil headquarters, one of the weekly tasks we undertook was a painstaking review of all the local newspapers. Large bundles of local newsprint would arrive every Thursday, and a staff member would spend hours reviewing each edition and literally cutting and pasting all political stories onto A4 sheets. These pages were then photocopied, and before close of business every Friday folders of the press cuttings were sent to senior party politicians and staffers. It was a pain of a job but it meant that key party personnel had a comprehensive picture of the local politics of each constituency.
Armed with this intelligence, the party leader, press officer or general secretary could compliment or confront Oireachtas members or party officials about their work rate, show an informed interest in local initiatives and, most importantly, keep a keen eye on brewing controversies.
I have no idea whether local media monitoring is still done for the Fianna Fáil leadership, although one assumes that online editions of local newspapers and sophisticated search engines would make the task less onerous nowadays.
At any rate, Fianna Fáil Ministers or party managers should have seen the politically explosive potential of the initially localised controversy about what Willie O'Dea said about Cllr Maurice Quinlivan months ago. The Limerick Leaderstories should have jumped off the page or screen. Missing this story during the local elections might be understandable, but when the matter became the subject of High Court proceedings red lights should have begun to flash.
When it emerged that a Minister had to pay substantial damages in a libel action, alarm bells should have begun to blare.
Once the matter became a full-blown controversy, however, somebody should have got a handle on all the facts.
Fianna Fáil should have better means of spotting problems like this at an early stage, intervening directly, assessing and seeking to manage potential fallout and, if necessary, removing the cause of the controversy before the unstoppable clamour emerges for his or her resignation.
Primary responsibility for this saga lies with O’Dea himself. It was he who committed the original smear and libel. At all material times he was the one in possession of most information, and was best positioned to appreciate its significance. If he did not come clean at an early stage to the Taoiseach or party handlers about the inaccurate affidavit, then he carries additional responsibility.
When the controversy broke, O’Dea should have shifted from his normal aggressive gear. A genuine act of contrition at an early stage might have attracted some public and political forgiveness.
If the Government had known the import of these Limerick events earlier, O’Dea would not necessarily have survived but at least it would have avoided a scenario where the Government was brought to the brink and suffered substantial political damage.
Once the prospect of a Dáil confidence motion was mooted, opting to force one before the weekend was the best decision of two bad options, but the tone of the debate on the Government side should have been better managed. Fianna Fáil, however, should never have found itself or have had to put the Green Party in this position.
What will concern Government backbenchers most is that there has been a pattern of failures of this type in the regime. In the autumn, the Government overcame some massive political hurdles and implemented some major economic decisions. In the last few weeks it has lapsed back to previous bad habits.
The fact that this controversy became the focus firstly of sustained parliamentary attacks and then of inter-party coalition tensions is a classic case of bad political management allowing an “event” to grow into a full-blown Government crisis.
The events of recent days have also exposed dangerous weaknesses in the systems between the Government partners. Coalition relations are shaped primarily by the personal dynamic between the party leaderships. By all accounts the atmosphere between Gormley and Ryan and their ministerial colleagues is very good. However, this is insufficient in the current intense political environment.
Fianna Fáil in Government is now facing, and being blamed for the need to face, unparalleled economic challenges. The Greens are still traumatised by the electoral disaster of the local and European elections, and fearful of what it augurs for their survival. Some of their membership are besotted with the illusory notion that if they could find an issue on which to quit Government, they could save their electoral skin.
The Green leadership, however, is more shaken by how close things came to collapse this week, and may be more careful about playing brinkmanship.
This Coalition cannot survive if internal Green Party tensions, instead of being channelled within, are vented on op-ed pages or all over Twitter.
This Government needs to put in place an inter-party early warning system of the type operated by the Pat Farrell-Pat Magner group during the Albert Reynolds-Dick Spring government. The demise of that government illustrates that no early warning system can protect against all unknown unknowns, but if Cowen and Gormley are going to survive the remainder of their term they are each going to have to dramatically improve their political game.