The Dáil returns - Rivalries an impediment to recovery

The Dáil will sit for the first time after the summer break next Tuesday and, as anyone with even a passing interest in the country’s affairs realises, it could be a deeply divisive term and probably impose changes that will make life less comfortable for most citizens.

Unfortunately, it seems that we are at the point when doing the hard thing and the right thing, the only thing left to us really, are one and the same. That infamous can has run out of road and been kicked to death. The post-mortem results — the dreaded December budget — will not make for pretty reading. This week’s missive from the IMF, though expressed in the gentlest of very firm terms, confirmed that.

Despite all of that the return of the Dáil is little more than a ceremonial set piece, a kind of democratic, up-from-the-country trooping of the colour, and it would be foolish to expect that the event by itself will provoke any new set of ideas — much less solutions — to confront our difficulties. That may seem a sceptical view but it is not because, as any politician will assure anyone who cares to listen, the work of parliament continues whether it is sitting or not. In these days of huge challenge that is very obviously the case.

In that light might it be too much to hope that even for the next few months a kind of national Tallaght Strategy might prevail? Is it too much to ask of our politicians to put aside their personal and party ambitions until we have restored something approaching sanity to our national finances? Is it too much to hope that the Government and opposition can work together to try to resolve our difficulties, most especially our dreadful unemployment crisis?

Is it too much to hope that next Tuesday might actually mark a real, new beginning rather than just another set-piece day when our ineffective parliament is brought back to something approaching a half life by the jump-leads stimulation offered by an opportunity to slag off opponents?

This plea may seem radically idealistic but the reality is that it might not only save our economy, and thus rebuild our society, it might also save our discredited and dysfunctional political system as well.

The Dáil agenda and the issues are obvious, some are just divisive but others are almost viscerally so. Apart at all from economic matters we may, at last, get to vote on protecting children’s rights. That should be straight forward enough but facilitating the European Court of Human Rights ruling on abortion will be very difficult. Election promises on abolishing the Seanad and the much-trumpeted but terribly under-whelming Constitutional Forum will have to be delivered too.

Reform of public life and the public sector, especially the pace of that reform and the Croke Park deal will, in the long run, prove to be the decisive battles on the journey towards recovery. If those issues are not challenging enough the Government will have to introduce water charges, a property tax and, more than likely, college fees before this crisis runs its course. Resolving debt issues and securing our place in Europe will also demand energy and commitment.

That brief synopsis is so daunting and it cannot be delivered unless our attitudes and systems change. Surely those challenges trump any of the principles our largely conservative, centrist political parties cling to to try and differentiate themselves from each other? If not now, when?