ANALYSIS:The medical card controversy struck terror into the heart of Fianna Fáil, the party of perpetual power. The Greens showed more steel, writes Stephen Collins
A WEEK AFTER the budget, the Government has ended up in the worst of all possible worlds. After days of jitters and half-turns it has been forced into a humiliating climbdown on medical cards for the over-70s. The response may have calmed the nerves of wobbling Fianna Fáil TDs but the issue will rankle with the elderly for years to come.
Potentially more serious is the fact that the inept handling of the controversy has raised serious questions about the capacity of the Government to act in the months and years ahead, as it attempts to cope with a serious crisis in the public finance and the deteriorating state of the economy.
On the short-term political front, yesterday's joint press conference by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Minister for Health Mary Harney, and the Green Party leader, John Gormley, to announce that the original scheme was being abandoned had the immediate effect of steadying nerves in Fianna Fáil.
The Taoiseach was applauded by his TDs at the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting that followed shortly afterwards, but the doubtful value of such applause is put into stark relief by the standing ovation received by the Minister for Finance from Government TDs when he delivered his budget to the Dáil last Tuesday.
Still in terms of short-term political survival the new medical card scheme for the over-70s announced yesterday seems to have worked. After two inept efforts to signal a change of policy, first on the 9 o'clock television news last Friday and then on RTÉ Radio One's This Week programme on Sunday, Mr Cowen made it third time lucky.
With Fianna Fáil and Green TDs now behind him he should be able to win the vote in the Dáil tonight on the Fine Gael motion calling for a reversal of the medical card decision. Still the Government's majority has slipped from 12 to eight after what was probably the most nerve-racking week for a Government since the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition collapsed in November 1994.
If Michael Lowry and Jackie Healy-Rae had followed the example of Finian McGrath, the Government's majority would have been down to four and getting into really dangerous territory. As it is, the coalition that was designed to be impervious because of its different components is now suddenly much more vulnerable. Its continued survival now depends solely on the Greens. If they walk on any issue we will have a general election.
While that position gives the Greens much more leverage in Government it exposes them far more to the wrath of the public and pressure from interest groups of all kinds. Given the kind of financial and economic storm they will have to withstand in the months and years ahead they will have no more comfortable days in Government.
At one stage during all the hullabaloo of recent days Green Party leader John Gormley got a text message from a beleaguered Mary Harney. It read: "The worst day in Government is still better than the best day in Opposition." It was a sobering thought for the Minister for the Environment and helped to steady his nerve.
Behind the scenes it appears that the Greens were in far more turmoil that appeared to be the case in public. The party Ministers, TDs and senators held two long meetings last Friday to hammer out a strategy that would allow the coalition to climb down from its medical card announcement. While there was no threat to leave Government, the meetings represented the first step in a process designed to pave the way for the party's exit if its coalition partners had not proved amenable to backing down.
"Finian got the glory by walking out but we got the result," said one Green source. Carlow Kilkenny Green TD Mary White said on radio yesterday that the party would have had to leave Government if the matter had not been settled in a manner that suited the Greens.
The party's opponents can point out that the two Green Ministers were present in Cabinet when the crucial decision on medical cards was made and they only got cold feet when panic surged through the Fianna Fáil backbenches on Friday.
The remarkable thing was that the Greens actually showed far more steel during the crisis than the party of perpetual power, Fianna Fáil.
The terror in the ranks of the main Government party in the face of public hostility was the most striking aspect of the entire controversy. It raises profound questions about the ability of the party to run the country in the years ahead.
There are very few of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party who were around in the difficult days of the late 1980s when Charles Haughey and Ray MacSharry confronted the economic crisis of that era with steely determination. Of course the Fianna Fáil minority government of that era had the luxury of Fine Gael support in the shape of the Tallaght strategy. It meant that the party's backbenchers were fire-proofed against criticism at local level.
This time around they are on their own and Fine Gael, after a succession of election defeats, is in no mood to bail out a Fianna Fáil-led Government. The next general election could well see the biggest shake-up in the political world for a long time but, until that happens, Fianna Fáil and the Greens have the responsibility of sorting out a terrible mess, the creation of which owes much to the policies pursued over the past five years.
The final element in the current Government equation is the Progressive Democrats. Mary Harney has taken a terrible political beating up in the past week, more for the poor execution by her department of a policy decision, than the principle of the decision to abolish medical cards for those over 70 who can afford to pay for them.
With the PDs now counting down the days to dissolution there must be a big question mark over Harney's long term participation in the Cabinet.
Many of her health reforms are now finally beginning to bear fruit after a succession of ferocious battles with interest groups in the health service but whether she will stay around long enough to take the political kudos is an open question.
For the rest of this Government's life the pressure will pile on to the shoulders of Fianna Fáil and the Greens. Their capacity to withstand it is now the biggest issue in Irish politics.
• Stephen Collins is Irish Times Political Editor