ANALYSIS:Veteran politicians have earned their cabinet places but newer blood deserves a chance too, writes STEPHEN COLLINS
THE EXTRAORDINARY scale of the change in the shape of Irish politics brought about by the general election will be evident when the 31st Dáil meets for the first time at noon today and the new TDs take their seats.
Never before in the history of the State will an incoming Dáil look so different to its predecessor and it will take some time for everybody to adjust to the new reality.
Outgoing Taoiseach Brian Cowen will not even be in the Dáil chamber for the election of his successor because he is no longer a TD. This is something that has never happened before and it will set the tone for an epoch-making day.
The 20 Fianna Fáil TDs returned to the Dáil will initially take their place on the government side of the chamber but will quickly move over to opposition benches after Enda Kenny has been elected taoiseach.
The 76 Fine Gael TDs will then move to the government benches occupied for so long by Fianna Fáil.
The Labour parliamentary party will continue to occupy the middle benches it has become used to since 1997 but will need more room for the expanded numbers.
Over on the opposition side, Fianna Fáil will occupy the space taken by Fine Gael for the past 14 years but, given its radically diminished numbers, will have to share it with the 14 Sinn Féin TDs and the 19 Independents and Others, most of whom are clubbing together to form a technical group.
The first item on the agenda, after the names of the 166 new TDs are read out by the clerk of the Dáil, will be the election of the ceann comhairle. Given the incoming government’s massive majority, this plum position will go to an experienced Fine Gael or Labour TD.
Then it will be on to the election of Enda Kenny as taoiseach.
The longest-serving TD in the Dáil will achieve his lifetime’s ambition just over a month before his 60th birthday and few will begrudge him the honour after the toil and determination he has shown in pursuing the goal over the past nine years.
He faces truly daunting challenges in the weeks and months ahead but, for a day at least, he will be allowed to enjoy the extraordinary nature of the political triumph involved in leading Fine Gael to being, for the first time, by far the biggest political party in the Dáil.
“I am still scratching my head wondering if it’s all true,” said one long-time Fine Gael activist who arrived at Leinster House a day early yesterday to savour every moment.
“If you told me last December we were going to get 76 seats I wouldn’t have believed you. I wouldn’t even have believed it at the beginning of the election campaign,” he added.
Kenny and his senior colleagues played down expectations during the election campaign and adopted a restrained tone in victory but their supporters will not be able to contain themselves today.
To have not only defeated Fianna Fáil but to have routed the old enemy is something they never expected in their wildest dreams.
Those appointed to cabinet will also be celebrating today. Many of them have spent such a long part of their careers in the wilderness of opposition that they had almost given up hope of ever making it to the cabinet. The members of the Fine Gael and Labour negotiating teams, who are all certain to make it to cabinet, are prime examples.
On the Fine Gael side, Alan Shatter has been in the Dáil since 1981 but has never been in cabinet and neither has Phil Hogan, who was first elected in 1989, after two years in the Seanad. Only Michael Noonan has previous cabinet experience. Kenny himself was in the cabinet during the rainbow government of 1994-97, but apart from that has spent most of his years in the Dáil since his election in 1976 on the opposition benches.
On the Labour side, two of the party’s negotiators, Pat Rabbitte and Joan Burton, have never been in cabinet, while the third, Brendan Howlin, did have one full Dáil stint in cabinet from 1992 to 1997. The party leader and incoming tánaiste Eamon Gilmore is another who will be in cabinet for the first time.
There are advantages in having so many long-serving politicians in their 50s and 60s in the new cabinet but there is also a danger that younger, talented politicians in both parties could be overlooked.
Going on cabinet speculation it appears that Simon Coveney may be the only minister under 50 and that TDs such as Brian Hayes and Leo Varadkar, who made a very important contribution to the Fine Gael campaign, will be overlooked.
The same will probably apply to Seán Sherlock of Labour, who has been one of the party’s most impressive performers, both inside and outside the Dáil.
There is a real danger that a government so heavily weighted towards the older end of the age spectrum could quickly lose touch with voters under 50.
Given that so much of the pain of the downturn is being inflicted on the younger age groups, and that the middle aged and elderly have been generally successful in defending their interests, it could prove to be a millstone around the government’s neck as time goes on.
Kenny has promised his parliamentary party that there will be big changes in personnel at the halfway mark of the government’s life, but Bertie Ahern was fond of making similar noises at the start of his administrations and then doing very little about them.
Those who are overlooked today will have to grin and bear it.
Their disappointment may be tempered by the fact that many of their colleagues who get cabinet posts will have to sip from a variety of poisoned chalices in the months ahead.
In the longer term, though, Kenny will have to give younger TDs a chance to prove themselves if he really wants to make history and win a second term for a Fine Gael-led government.