Grealish move - We need a re-energised opposition

BARACK OBAMA built his candidacy, in public at least, on his great charisma, a fine, resonating baritone voice and the promise of a new America.

He has convinced a great number of voters to be optimistic; he has convinced, it seems, nearly half of his fellow citizens that he can rejuvenate and deliver the American Dream.

In Ireland, where we are facing every challenge America faces except foreign wars, we have an opposition that is nothing like as charismatic, energising, provocative or plausible as Obama.

At this time the main opposition party, Fine Gael, is celebrating a birthday, be it their 76th, 86th or 87th. What the party cannot be celebrating is that it is over a quarter of a century — 26 years — since it was last elected to power.

At the same time we have what looks like Deputy Noel Grealish’s seemingly imminent move to Fianna Fáil signalling the final moments of a long, drawn-out death scene for the Progressive Democrats.

It seems clear that Irish political power has become even more concentrated and that if Fianna Fáil have settled for most of the power all of the time rather than all of the power most of the time, the opposition, and most particularly, Fine Gael, have had to settle for nearly three decades in the shadows, powerless, grumpy and occasionally comatose.

In a few years Fine Gael will have to mark the half century since the publication of the seminal statement: Declan Costello’s 1965 Towards a Just Society, a document that imagined a new Ireland. It made the party relevant and was one of the documents that articulated the hopes of so many people across all party lines.

Since then Fine Gael has stumbled and tripped itself up, sometimes in the most embarrassing ways.

But is that changing? Today we publish an interview with Enda Kenny in which he says that next month’s emergency budget must do nothing to help the construction sector. “No incentives. We need to leave the property market alone. This budget is... about the fundamental economics and government costs... ”

Though contradicting the hired guns of the building sector, the stockbrokers and banks who advocate a complete makeover of the tax system to encourage building, Mr Kenny’s position will enjoy support amongst those who believe that the greed and recklessness of builders and bankers are the real reasons the sector is in such trouble.

If this stridency — and Labour’s “Third Way” declarations — shape a reinvigorated opposition we should all celebrate. Effective opposition is about more than point-scoring and the next election. It is about offering options, about testing policy and prodding policy makers. The first step towards being a serious contender for power is to be a meaningful opposition.