First signs of strain appear in Coalition

UP until recently, the Government was having a reasonably comfortable time of it. No major gaffes. No indication of public outrage at the U-turns they had already performed. The Queen of England and the US President coming to visit and lending a bit of cheer. Everything had been going swimmingly. But in the last week to 10 days, the first signs of strain have begun to appear.

It started with Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton’s proposals to reform wage-setting mechanisms in the private sector. Labour had agreed to the need for reform, but not the particular reforms Mr Bruton was proposing.

Nor did they like the fact that his proposals leaked into the public domain before the Cabinet had finished discussing the issue.

And so, it now seems, Labour stitched up their Fine Gael colleague.

On Thursday of last week in the Dáil, Labour’s Brendan Howlin was due to handle the morning’s business on the Government’s behalf.

Some Labour backbenchers rose to their feet to express their concern about Mr Bruton’s proposals. Mr Howlin assured them nothing had been decided and the matter would have to come back to Cabinet first.

It had all the appearances of a mini-revolt forming on the Labour backbenches — TDs ready to cause trouble for the ministers if Government policy was not to their liking.

In fact, it was nothing of the sort. It’s understood that the Labour chief whip, Emmet Stagg, requested at least one of the backbenchers to raise the issue directly with Mr Howlin that morning.

By doing so, it lent the impression of a backbench revolt forming, and gave Labour ministers the cover in Cabinet to demand a watering-down of the proposals.

So what at first appeared to be a mini-revolt was little more than the Labour leadership carefully arranging an opportunity to get its message out to supporters: that it disagreed with Mr Bruton’s proposals.

It was a parliamentary ploy that sent a signal to the Labour base and gave Mr Bruton a poke in the eye at the same time.

Labour has not denied that Mr Stagg requested the party backbenches to quiz Mr Howlin to give the minister an opportunity to make clear his views.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny subsequently declared that Mr Bruton was merely following a “personal agenda” with the proposals and that Cabinet would ultimately decide.

It seemed Labour had won a small victory. All of this might, in turn, seem like cunning politics. But of course, Fine Gael ministers are pretty adept at the political game themselves, and would have seen through the Labour ploy in a heartbeat.

While very early days — the coalition is not yet 100 days in office — it may not augur well that Labour feels the need to have to resort to such tactics so soon.

Maybe it was just a shot across the bows to their coalition partners. But the episode shows that, behind the cosy pictures of Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore swapping jokes, there is already tension between the two parties.

Further proof came in the confusion over the “interim household charge”.

Environment Minister Phil Hogan announced that the new charge — to serve as an interim measure until a property tax can be introduced — would take effect from January 1 next.

The EU-IMF bailout obliges the Government to introduce a property tax next year. Given that the site valuation mechanisms won’t be ready, Mr Hogan was putting forward an alternative way of doing it and being straight with the public in the process.

There is a lot of bad news coming, and the public won’t appreciate if politicians are not upfront.

But rather than leaving Mr Hogan get on with it, Labour decided to point out again — this time in the shape of Mr Gilmore — that nothing had been finalised or agreed at Cabinet.

Enda Kenny went along with this, agreeing that nothing had been agreed and the public would have to wait for clarification.

This was either because yet another clash was going on behind closed doors at Government Buildings or both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste were afraid to level with the public. Either way, it was a bad ending to a bad week.