The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Yeah, but what’s in it for them? Those Fianna Fáil ‘Independents’… September 16, 2010

A flurry of reports about the Fianna Fáil “Independents” this week, that group who have lost the party whip. Interestingly the concentration in the media has been on the TDs, understandable in that they are the ones who are most directly involved in propping up the government. But let’s not forget that there are at least four, and possibly five, Senators who have lost the whip. That’s quite an attrition rate, whatever way one cuts it.

So now we hear about ‘olive branches’ being offered to the dissident four FF TDs.

Mr Cowen said the Government was committed to making sure it had a working majority in the Dáil in order to do what was necessary on behalf of the country.
He said the four TDs who had lost the whip had been fully supportive of the Government.
“There are issues that arose during the course of this administration on which people took some decisions, but their support for the party is clear,” said Mr Cowen.

And there’s apparently been…

…reports that at least some of the exiled TDs had been involved in discussions about returning to the parliamentary party.
The four outside the party whip are Dr Jim McDaid of Donegal North East; Dr Jimmy Devins and Eamon Scanlon, Sligo, and Mattie McGrath, Tipperary South.

The political significance is that…

The return of the four would give Fianna Fáil 74 seats in the 163-member Dáil at a time of growing uncertainty about the continued support of the Independents who have backed the coalition since the summer of 2007.

And this at a time when the other Independents… the Independent Independents, as it were, are just a little bit restless.

Tipperary North TD Michael Lowry and Kerry South TD Jackie Healy Rae voted against the coalition over the Stag Hunting Bill in July, and while they resumed their support on other issues before the Dáil summer break, their long-term commitment is now in doubt.
Former Galway Progressive Democrat TD Noel Grealish announced during the summer that his support has become conditional, and he is expected to act in tandem with Mr Lowry and Mr Healy Rae when the Dáil resumes at the end of this month.
The coalition narrowly survived a number of Dáil votes before the summer, and the attitude of the three Independents, who had been regarded as solid supporters, has led to doubts about the coalition’s ability to survive until the summer of 2012.

And those are just the pro-ish Government Independents (there are some great rumours floating around that they’re being offered blandishments by the opposition to cut and run at the next Budget – thing is it’s hard to see what an opposition with such a potentially crushing majority can offer them that would be sufficient incentive for them to do the deed).
There’s also the two or three non-Government Independents floating around as well who seem, as has been noted previously on the CLR, to vote with and agin the Government with remarkable fluidity – though as someone commented at the weekend perhaps that’s not such a surprise since there’s little appetite to be seen as the people who pulled down the government, and it’s worth reflecting on that dynamic because it really goes to the heart of much of what we’re seeing, or to be more precise not seeing.
This is, as it’s now almost compulsory to note, the least popular government in living memory. The constituent elements are in the electoral dog house, at least according to the last rush of polls before the Summer, and while much may have changed subsequently as with Cowen’s unfortunate media appearance one morning this week it has been far from a case of out of sight out of mind. There’s no end of hypthosising over the shape of the upcoming polls, due out at the turn of the month as the Dáil resumes. I don’t, just for the record, have a clue what they’ll show. The volatility of their results in recent times has been such that it would take a brave person to adamantly state that such and such will be the case. Pushed I guess I’d think that we’ll see some decline in the LP vote, perhaps a marginal increase in that of FG and potentially a slight decline in the FF vote. But note that that’s a pretty hazy outline at best.
And this is where that feeds into the calculations of TDs. Noone can be certain how any particular action will play with the public. Fianna Fáil is electoral poison, but it’s interesting, is it not, that none of the dissidents has left FF. Indeed take a look at them and they still see themselves as FF TDs. So, poison it may be and yet they’re still on board.
More importantly, as Cowen noted, they’ve been ‘supportive’ of the Government, particularly – indeed most crucially – on economic matters. There’s an enormous irony, not unremarked upon both here and elsewhere, that the issues they’ve broken on have been peripheral to the economic policies forwarded by the Government.
That being the case I find it hard to believe that they’ll cut and run over the Budget late in the year. Indeed in a later report in the Irish Times it was clear that they’re not that exercised about it…

[Eamon] Scanlon said he wanted the extension for Sligo General hospital promised in the last budget and Mr. McGrath said that the Taoiseach would need to ‘restrain’ the Green Party.

Also useful to note that neither Scanlon nor McGrath had been contacted by the chief whip, John Curran (who tellingly ‘point[ed] out that they were broadly supportive of the Government’s economic policy’). Which suggests that Jim McDaid and Jimmy Devins are much closer in to the party than the other two.

Also perhaps significant that Joe Behan, that earliest of first movers, is no longer seriously mentioned as being amongst the ranks of those who might be enticed back.

Certainly the Independents have fractured in a way that simply could not have been anticipated in 2007, or indeed by studying the Technical Group of the previous Dáil which remained distinctly separate from pro-FF/PD administration Independents. Of course the situation was radically different in the last Dáil with the need for Independent support being markedly less than it is in this one, something that one might suspect provided no end of comfort for many amongst their numbers denied, providentially, the need to choose between various none too pleasant options.

Consider another statement by Eamon Scanlon…

‘The Government has my support but at the same time I am very conscious of Sligo General Hospital and the improvement that’s required for that hospital’.

If that sounds like a man who has found a reasonably – and perhaps uniquely -comfortable place in the Irish polity, well most likely that is because he has, neither entirely out, nor entirely in, but able to straddle the two. In a political environment going through unprecedented convulsions that may be far from the worse place to be. What benefit is there to Scanlon or McGrath or indeed the two Dr’s, McDaid and Devins to return to their old position? So, not quite the shedding of FF TDs to the joys of genuine Independence that has been long predicted, but instead a half-way house that suits a government dependent on staggering forward for fear of seizing up completely and suits individual TDs wary about an unpredictably competitive electoral environment fast approaching.

Whether voters will respond positively to this remarkable feat of political agility remains to be seen.