The Green Party has agreed a revised programme for government that carries two risks. Time may not allow the party to complete the programme, while there may be insufficient money to pay for its implementation. Last Saturday however, party delegates backed the new agreement by a four-to-one margin and were happy with the outcome. Fianna Fáil and the Greens have bought some more time with more borrowed money.
Yesterday, the Green Party leader John Gormley refused to cost the 200 different pledges in the 40-page document. The extra costs, Mr Gormley insisted, would be worked out within unchanged budget parameters, which include a balanced budget by 2013. As things stand, the State borrows €400 million each week to bridge the gap between tax revenue and public spending.
Private negotiations that require public endorsement – whether involving social partners on pay talks or coalition partners renegotiating terms for government – are invariably stage-managed to some degree. Brinkmanship is a necessary part of the negotiating art, used to impress party supporters and to win their backing. The Green Party can be well satisfied with its achievement. It can point to a particular success on education: where pupil-teacher ratios have been frozen at current levels; where third-level fees will not come about and where 500 extra primary and secondary teachers are promised. On political donations there are some welcome reforms. In future, corporate donations may only be made to a political fund and parties would benefit in proportion to their voting strength.
Green Party delegates attending the special conference were keenly aware of the political consequences of a rejection of the revised programme. Both coalition parties knew that failure to reach agreement would have meant their mutual assured destruction in a general election. For the Greens, the electoral wipeout that began in the local and European elections would have ended with the loss of most of its Dáil seats. A break-up of government at this time would have been highly damaging. Political instability would have been added to economic uncertainty, as the Oireachtas prepares to vote on the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) legislation and as the Government prepares for a difficult budget in December.
But the Green Party also has some political lessons to learn. It hardly says much for the authority of Green ministers who, having agreed legislation in Cabinet – as on Nama – later allow this to become subject to a veto by delegates at a special conference; or indeed that last Saturday a Government could have been removed by the will of a shade more than one out of three party delegates. Representative democracy should mean that voters elect members to parliament and the Dáil elects a government. That government should stand or fall on the majority it can secure in the Dáil. The Greens, as a party of government, now need to rewrite their rulebook to acknowledge this basic principle of representative democracy.