Green Party should learn from Labour’s mistakes
This, incidentally, will not be in the sole power of any one element supporting the new Fianna Fáil-led coalition.
The Green Party might also aspire to exercise an influence and presence within government that will last rather longer than the admittedly spectacular three years of Noel Browne in the coalition led by John A Costello(1948-’51).
The short-lived Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition of 1993-’94 was an excellent government that helped bring about the first IRA ceasefire and the beginning of the Celtic Tiger (a phrase first coined in the summer of 1994).
While there were faults on both sides, the Labour Party’s decision to bring down the coalition led by Albert Reynolds and, crucially, not to re-form one with Bertie Ahern in December 1994, on a flimsy legal pretext, proved in the long term far more costly for the Labour Party, now facing into a third term of opposition.
Following the ‘Spring tide’ in 1992, Labour had the prospect of at least two consecutive full-length terms of government with Fianna Fáil.
The possibility of an historic realignment of Irish politics based on that partnership was lost, reinforced by the Fine Gael-oriented present Labour leadership’s preference from a long way out for the opposition benches as a fallback position. The alternative might have been a very compatible partnership with Fianna Fáil from a policy point of view, the preferred option of many within the trade union movement.
I look forward to the present Government, with the Greens, the PDs and independents, being a lot more stable under Bertie Ahern’s leadership than the disappointingly short coalition of 1993-’94 with which Fergus Finlay and I were associated in mutual respect and cooperation as political advisers to our respective leaders.
Martin Mansergh TD
Leinster House
Kildare Street
Dublin 2
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