Pat Leahy: Halligan’s moves threaten Independents’ agenda

Like many similar countries that experienced the trauma of the banking crisis and economic crash in 2008-2009, Ireland’s politics was profoundly changed by the experience.

It is probably still changing in ways only becoming apparent.

The deep recession that followed the crash and the programmes of harsh austerity destroyed the faith of many people in the existing political parties and led to a desire for something new, something different, something better.

That the programmes of austerity have been successful – on their own terms – in Ireland, by restoring the public finances and so creating the conditions for economic growth has not diminished their disruptive effects on the pre-existing political landscape.

Many people believe there was a better way of achieving those goals; they believe austerity was implemented unfairly, by which they normally mean it was inflicted on them.

Many of them have a point, too, even if their counterfactual – what would have happened with, say, default on the bank debt, or a differently weighted correction of the public finances – can never, obviously, be proven.

Anyone who followed candidates as they knocked on doors during the post-bailout election of early 2011 couldn’t mistake the public mood that politics as usual, as practised by the old parties and their system, had failed and would have to change.

The Fine Gael-Labour coalition was elected on the back of this desire for change and hailed their election as a democratic revolution. Remember that?

Party men

But Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore weren't revolutionaries, they were longstanding party men, politicians long adept at working the existing system, ill-equipped to imagining an entirely new politics.

Change is one of the great tropes of politics; it also has the irresistible quality for any politicians of being all things to all men. So, having fanned the desire for change but being ultimately unable to meet it, their coalition government eventually became deeply unpopular.

A major piece of research carried out by pollsters Red C, to discover the causes of this unpopularity, found one theme came up again and again with voters: “broken promises”.

Fine Gael and Labour, voters believed, promised they would change things, but they didn’t.

So, this appetite for change moved on and, during the 2011-2016 government, it found its political expression in rapidly rising support for new parties and candidates.

Sinn Féin grew and grew. The Anti-Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit moved from the fringes of political discourse to the centre.

Polls found that Independents were the most popular single grouping.

Renua was founded. The Independent Alliance came together, so did Independents 4 Change.

The Social Democrats were born and “Independent Independents” continued to proliferate.

The most significant thing, though, was not that this new political alternative was arising, it was that it was so fractured, so riven by division, so distracted by personal rivalry, positioning and ambition.

In failing to come together in one or two blocs, as happened in other EU countries, they failed to offer a viable alternative.

In the end, perhaps inevitably, Independents ended up in Government.

And, equally inevitably, they are discovering that translating their commitment to change to the mundane tasks of governing is not as simple as they thought.

The desire for change is lofty, but inchoate; applying it to the world with real consequences, of hard choices between deserving causes and of finite resources, is hard.

Our permanent Government of civil service, quangos and deeply embedded interests in health, education and other public services is very conservative and protective of its own privileges. This is why governments often end up being unpopular.

Concessions

It is hard to discern any transformational change that the advent of the Independents in Government has produced.

Instead, they seem to be acting more or less the way Independents have always acted when supporting big-party governments – trying to leverage their support into concessions for their constituency, their pet projects or pet reforms.

Finian McGrath wants investment in Beaumont Hospital and services for cystic fibrosis sufferers, funding for disability and a dozen other things; rural ministers Denis Naughten and Seán Canney want a rebalancing of development for rural Ireland, for the west, for their constituencies; Boxer Moran spent weeks, during the floods of 2015, filling sandbags in Athlone – he’d like the State to help a bit; and so on.

Mostly, the Independents have made their bargains and are happy to get on with it.

Private conversations in the past few days would suggest their principal complaint is not that Fine Gael was treating John Halligan badly, but that Halligan was threatening the implementation of their common and individual agendas with his constant brinkmanship.

Halligan is uncomfortable being in Government with the status of insider, with the need to prioritise and compromise. It is at odds with his entire political life before now.

Specifically, he thinks he was duped on cardiac services in Waterford.

If he continues, he will talk himself out of Government, even if it’s hard to see what that would achieve.

Like an awful lot of “new politics”, though, all this isn’t new.

It’s just old politics without a Dáil majority.

Ireland isn’t unusual in that politicians here tend to want to utilise whatever power they have to confer benefits on their own constituencies.

It is unusual, though, that so many politicians at a national level seem to think this is their primary function – or even their only one.

That remains one of the chief impediments to good government.