Micheál Martin has said he wants to be taoiseach again after he leads Fianna Fáil into the next general election.
“I hope so. We are in a multiparty system so anything is possible,” the Tánaiste said during an interview with The Irish Times after he vacated the taoiseach’s office last weekend to make way for Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar.
“I think what we did last Saturday is important because it’s given a template for future governments that can alternate and that, hopefully, will enable a more mature governmental system in the context of a multiparty system.”
During almost 12 years as party leader Mr Martin has faced his share of internal criticism but no clear contender has emerged to potentially replace him. Despite leaving the taoiseach’s office with high levels of support in opinion polls, which might have been an advantage going into the next election, he said he does not regret holding the role for the first rather than second half of the Coalition’s term.
“I think it was important that I did become taoiseach,” he said. “At the time people were saying ‘you’re in the middle of Covid, why don’t you wait?’ If you want to become taoiseach it’s not about saying it’s all about when it’s rosy. It’s never rosy. I don’t do politics by cynical calculation.”
Mr Martin acknowledged Sinn Féin’s participation in a standing ovation for him in the Dáil when he handed over the job to Mr Varadkar as “a sign of respect”. He said a coalition between Mary Lou McDonald’s party and Fianna Fáil could not be ruled out.
“I think it’s a possibility in a modern multi-seat parliamentary system but Sinn Féin seem to want the best of both worlds. They use these false catch-all statements that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been running the country for a hundred years, conveniently forgetting that Sinn Féin boycotted the State for the guts of 50 or 60 years,” he said.
“They didn’t recognise the courts, didn’t recognise the Army, didn’t recognise the gardaí, and so on. They say ‘let’s get them out, let’s get them out’. At the same time they say they will not rule out coalition with either one of us. So which one is it?”
Asked if the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition showed conditions are ripe for a merger of the parties, Mr Martin said: “There’s nothing wrong with having two centre parties. Many European democracies do. We would argue we’re more left of centre; Fine Gael probably more to the right.”
[ The Irish Times view on the departure of Micheál Martin as TaoiseachOpens in new window ]
Reacting to Mr Varadkar’s claim that the current Fine Gael parliamentary party is the best he has seen, Mr Martin said Fianna Fáil’s Oireachtas team is better.
“I think we’re stronger. We’ve stronger personalities,” he said. “We’ve a lot of honest guys in the party who don’t pull their punches. That’s been a kind of tradition in the party. What was the old Charlie McCreevy line? That he’d love to be taoioseach but not leader because of the challenges it brings. There’s a robustness about the Fianna Fáil party. In a democracy, that’s no bad thing, you know.”
