David Higgins

Eamon Gilmore has once again come out and stated that he will not enter co-alition with Fianna Fáil after the next general election. He’s right to do so. No government that has caused such destruction to our economy should be afforded the support of other parties in 2012, it would be unjust.

However Eamon is not the first party leader to state that he wants Fianna Fáil out of office.

In the 1980s Dessie O’Malley’s establishment of the PDs originated from his dislike of Fianna Fáil, yet by 1989 Dessie was in coalition with them. The same occurred in 1992 when the Labour party doubled their seats in the Spring Tide on a rhetoric that was completely anti-Fianna Fáil. We know that Dick Spring became Tánaiste that same year. He bit the bullet and chose power over honour. And finally we all know what happened in 2007. To make up the numbers the Green Party accepted the reigns of power. Trevor Sergent gracefully resigned as leader of the party because he had made a promise that he would not enter co-alition with Fianna Fáil. At least he knew what he did was wrong.

While I have a passionate dislike for John “The Bull” O’Donoghue, he proved his worth two weeks ago when he spoke about Eamon Gilmore in relation to the Dog Breeding bill

If I may be excused the analogy, Deputy Gilmore reminds me of a gadfly around the tail of an old cow. He circles, one does not hear him, sometimes he might land but one does not see him land, but all the time one knows he is there and, in the final analysis, one will never quite know what he is up to, where he is going or how he will get there.

That appears to be a very popular stance to take in modern day Irish politics. It amounts to tut-tutism by the finest tut-tuter in the House and I am certain that a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

Fall for anything? Fall for Fianna Fáil maybe?

Gilmore can be as forceful as he likes but when his options are laid out after 2012 he’ll have two clear choices. Two-thirds of the cabinet seats with Fine Gael and the position of Tánaiste or half the seats and a rotating Taoiseach under Fianna Fáil. If history has shown anything, we know which option he’ll choose.

I’m sickened by a news story that has emerged about a family seeking public housing in Ashford, County Wicklow. A women and her four children were granted a house however they have been forcibly removed simply because the father and husband is a convicted sex offender. The father does not live with the family, it is only the wife and children. The family of five is now living with relatives in overcrowded conditions. What’s most startling about this situation is the support Labour councillors have given to the mob of residents that forced the family out.

When the residents learnt that the innocent family would be moving in, they immediately organised a protest up to Friday two weeks ago. The house was burnt down on Sunday night. One resident defended their actions.

We weren’t a mob. We decided to keep vigil. The protest finished on Friday morning, we were just keeping a vigil and making sure that nobody did move in

As far as I’m concerned somebody knows who burnt down the house and it’s likely to be one of the residents. I’ve no evidence to prove this but there’s no one else who would have had the motive! It’s also shocking that the residents were keeping a constant vigil and not one of them spotted and reported who entered the house to set it ablaze.

An 88-year-old disabled woman who lived next door has also been forced out of her specially adapted home because it is now in a dangerous condition.

If that fire had spread quickly enough the old lady could have been seriously injured or killed in the blaze. The risk of this happening is much higher than the risk of this man re-offending. He has been clean for 18 years and having been independently assessed he is now described as “low-risk”. There isn’t a non risk, he is as safe as possible! Also with residents on such high alert the man would hardly offend in that estate, especially as he is already the prime suspect by default. All this is besides the point. He won’t be living there!!!

The arsonist in this case is a greater threat to this community and I think the residents should focus their attention on finding this man instead of attacking an innocent family!

Councillor Conal Kavanagh and his Labour colleagues have lead the charge against this innocent family on a political level. They have supported the mob throughout and then Kavanagh put a motion down on the council not merely that sex offenders be removed entirely from the Co Wicklow housing list, but that anyone “they consorted with” should be taken off the list. Does this include his friends, his acquaintances, his postman???

I’d warm to the idea of denying the offenders public housing, but this is a step too far.

It’s really about time Labour stopped with their stupid populism. It’s getting out of hand and it’s starting to damage the lives of innocent people.

With both Labour and Fine Gael now polling in and around 30% in the opinion polls it’s important that we look deep into both party’s policy documents and policy positions on all the major issues in Ireland today.

Labour may have a strong uppercut with knockout one-liners and visible anger in the Dáil, led by Eamon Gilmore, however do they have a plan to save the country?

Both parties’ websites have policy pages. Labour’s is their “Our ideas and Policies” page while Fine Gael has a “recent policy catalogue” on its site. I have drawn from both these pages to compare the two parties.

Public Sector

Let’s first jump back to last year’s budget and to the thorny issue of public sector pay. Labour is well known as a political wing for the trade union movement and thus their pre-budget proposal was lacking in specific detail. Both Fine Gael and Labour committed to the government’s reduction of €1.3bn in the public sector pay bill however Labour only gave an aspiration to achieve this reduction through negotiations.

Fine Gael, on the other hand, came out with an extensive and detailed alternative budget that gave detailed breakdowns of where the money would come from. This specified that the €1.3bn would be made by a direct cut in pay to those earning above €30,000 in the public sector. There was no aspiration or hope for the future, just hard figures that spelled out the reality. Fine Gael even went above the €1.3bn suggested and proposed a further €500m reduction in the public sector pay bill through redundancies in the HSE, CIE and through the closing down of wasteful quangos.

Next, we come to the Croke Park deal, a sweet guarantee that ensures not a single pay cut or forced redundancy in the public sector unless there is a further deterioration in the economy. Seems pretty fair to me and that’s why Fine Gael has come out in favour of the proposal. We haven’t engaged in a massive campaign to promote the deal, or to influence union members. We’ve simply stated our position on the matter, a position the public are entitled to know.

However Labour have ducked and dodged this issue right from the beginning. They will not state any position on the deal and if we are to take their members view we can see that two motions were passed at this year’s party conference calling for the restoration of the budget pay cuts and an abolition of the pension levy! That’s the only position I’ve seen from Labour on this issue and so I am led to conclude that this is their policy position on the matter.

Banking

Labour and Fine Gael have roughly the same view on this issue, the establishment of a state run investment bank. This is the good bank option, as opposed to the government’s bad bank, NAMA. Fine Gael announced this policy first and then Labour followed suit months later with an almost identical proposal.

The main difference between the two parties is that Labour favours an ideologically lead nationalisation of the banks. This would be catastrophic for the banks because ultimately a bank belongs free in the marketplace. It’s almost like releasing an animal back into the wild where it belongs, with all the other animals. Keeping a bank nationalised is like keeping an animal in captivity.

Stimulus

Labour has no known policy for a stimulus package for the economy while Fine Gael has a plan to create over 100,000 jobs in the energy, communications and water sectors. It’s called NewERA and it’s a costed and well thought out plan to improve our infrastructure and create employment in the process. Sadly, once again Labour fails to even produce a plan on this, let alone to include specifics costings of their plan.

Health

I have to give Labour some credit in this area. They were the first party to endorse the principal of universal healthcare back in 2001. Fine Gael has since come around to the concept and has adopted a different model based on the Dutch system. The fundamental difference here again is specifics. The Fine Gael proposal has plenty of detail and they’ve even created a dedicated website to explain their policy and what it will provide to the public. Labour continues to only support the principal and it seems they simply want a full bureaucratic public healthcare system that has plagued our system and other health systems in the UK, France and elsewhere in Europe.

The Dutch model means that everyone has private health coverage, it has ended hospital waiting lists and the Fine Gael plan proposes FREE GP care for all, while keeping healthcare spending at its present levels. This can be done by cutting out all the managerial waste in the HSE and by employing competition between insurance companies. Fine Gael sees the benefit of the free market while Labour still remains in its backward mode of socialism and state control.

Education

Education is a huge priority for Fine Gael. Following the budget in December, Education Spokesman Brian Hayes organised large demonstrations against the removal of special needs teachers from a school in Tallaght. This school had 2/3 of its staff removed, in what can only be described as a heartless budget.

As well as protecting the vulnerable in our education system Fine Gael has two key proposals in the third level sector. The first is the re-introduction of third level fees. Our principal is that no student should pay at the door but instead pay after they have completed college. This would be a student loan system similar to many other countries across Europe and in the US. It’s fair to the students and it provides much needed funds to colleges and universities and this will maintain a high standard of facilities and service into the future.

Sadly the Labour party won’t budge on this issue. They aspire to a completely free third level sector, something that is neither practical nor affordable. Since free third level access was introduced in the 1990s it has only served to give higher income families an easy ride while it has not lead to a higher participation rate among lower income families. With Fine Gael’s proposal, supports can be given to those who need it, while those who can pay, pay.

Fine Gael has also recognised the economic benefits of overseas students coming to study in Irish universities. Simple measures that are outlined in their policy document would lead to tens of thousands of more students coming here each year.

Labour also has a policy document called “Priorities in Education”. Again, it’s another document that is purely aspirational and it doesn’t take any regard to our huge deficit and national debt. It even calls for an increase in education spending and to make our spending on education higher than European norms! We just don’t have the money to do that. I agree with Labour’s views on the separation of Church and school however otherwise it’s a completely useless document.

Half of the document is “Labour’s school for the 21st Century”. Firstly this school isn’t theirs, it’s designed by an architecture firm and it’s nothing new! My school in Knocklyon, built in 2000 and other schools like Malahide Community School have almost identical designs. Labour thinks it’s looking to the future, but it’s actually a decade behind! This cross section is almost identical to my school.

Watching RTÉ’s “The Frontline” this week it became clear the huge differences that lie between The Greens and Fianna Fáil. Councillors shouting at each other over issues such as planning and the banks showed the cracks that lie within the government. It also highlights how incompatible the two parties are and all you have to do is look at the Green’s “shopping list” for the Programme for Government. They wanted Education cuts reversed, social welfare levels maintained and a drastic reduction in the number of TD’s along with more reforms in local government. Did any of this happen, NO!

The differences that lie between FF and The Greens makes me think about the likelihood of a Fine Gael/Labour co-alition. The is the right-left alternative that is likely after the next General Election however these two parties are just as incompatible as the present co-alition.

Labour will not budge on public sector cuts while Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar has made it clear that cuts have to be made in wages of public servants.

There is also a lack of consensus on the banks too. Fine Gael has its “Good Bank” plan while Labour wants temporary nationalisation of the banks. Now maybe the establishment of NAMA will end this issue but it’s still likely to be a contentious issue around a FG/Lab cabinet table.

Many will point to the present co-alition and say that it works to have two fundamentally different parties in government however the two situations are not the same. FF has 76 TD’s while the Greens only have 6. They hold the balance of power but their influence is restrained by those numbers. My fear is that disagreements in a FG/Lab
co-alition would bring down the government within a matter of weeks.

FG will get over 70 seats next General Election and Labour could get anything up to 30 based on current opinion polls. This puts Labour in a much better bargaining position than the Greens currently have with Fianna Fáil.

So, what is the ideal co-alition? Well, Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil actually! Not only would this see an end to civil-war politics in this country but it would eventually see the fall of the Fianna Fáil party I believe. The small party in government always gets screwed. We saw it with the PDs, we’re about to see it with the Greens and after going into bed with FF and FG in the 90′s, Labour’s Spring Tide was reduced to a mere wave in 1997.

A FG/FF co-alition would highlight the fact that FF is not needed. After one term, if the economy is back on track FG would get most of the praise at the expense of FF. Likewise such a co-alition would expose the left in Ireland and it would lead to the Labour party becoming the main opposition part in Ireland. I think it’s time we had a proper left-right divide in this country instead of the on-off centre right switching game between FG and FF.

Let’s unite the right and expose the populist, no cuts approach taken by Labour, Sinn Féin, The Socialists and other non-pragmatic left parties.

I believe the upcoming budget will eat further into the FF core vote and it could push their opinion polls standing down to under 15%. If this were to be replicated in a general election then FF could find itself with only 25 or so seats, less than what Labour will get, soaring FF to third place in the parties race. They’ve held first place since the foundation of the state. This fall in support could go FG’s way to push it over the 83 seats required for an overall majority however I’m doubtful about whether that will materialise. Labour’s unwavering support for maintaining wages will go down well with the electorate and if they can continue to play populism in their favour then many of the FF seats could swing their way.

So, in the next General Election FG could find themselves just shy of the 83. Labour with well over 30 seats and FF somewhere in the 20s. Independents could support FG but the likes of Maureen O’Sullivan, Finian McGrath and Michael Lowry would not be jumping to support a FG government characterised by cuts unless there were financial injections to their respective constituencies, something this country cannot afford!

Anyway, there won’t be another chance to topple this government until after the budget. We’ll have to wait until then to see how public opinion swings during what will be the coldest winter of discontent this country has ever known.