For a government of all the talents we need only change a single word

OUR country is facing an emergency.

It’s probably unprecedented, worse than anything that we have ever seen before.

No matter where you look — employment and jobs, standards of living, house prices, the availability of credit, the ability to keep public services going — there is an air of deep crisis.

And what makes everything worse is the collapse in confidence. There doesn’t seem to be any way to tax ourselves or to spend our way out of difficulty. Business doesn’t have the answer and the world of banking appears to be a pit of despair. Above all, people are rapidly losing faith in politics.

We desperately need a government that has a mandate to tackle the crisis and one that inspires confidence among the people. For whatever reason, our present Government is seen to be floundering and out of its depth.

That may be unfair — nobody predicted the depth and immediacy of the crisis that was going to engulf us, and no government would have been prepared for it.

I was one of the people, for instance, who argued that the wealth accumulated in Ireland over the past 15 years would see us through any difficulty.

Little did I, or anyone else, realise how quickly that wealth could begin to evaporate. No one, I believe, really understands what has happened and why.

But fair or unfair, one of the rules of politics is that we expect our Government at least to appear to be in charge. There is a widespread perception now that a lot of the best political brains in Ireland are outside the cabinet and that the Government has lost its way.

There are only two ways in which such a government can be formed in Ireland — and one of them needs to be applied immediately to our present situation.

The first way would involve a general election. That’s what Eamon Gilmore called for last weekend, with a lot of cogent arguments.

He told RTÉ News that government spending cuts would have to be made to help the economy — but only as part of a package that would stimulate it, safeguard employment and get unemployed people back to work.

That was the first time the opposition had accepted the need for cuts — but Gilmore made the point again and again that fairness had to be the key to persuading people about their necessity.

If current opinion polls are to be believed, a general election can have only one result. Fianna Fáil and the Green party would be decimated (the third element in the coalition, the PDs, wouldn’t even contest the election — there’s a political first for you!).

The parties now in opposition would then be left with the daunting task of reading themselves into office very quickly and getting to grips with economic problems no previous incoming government has ever had to face.

Of course it can be done. After all, isn’t that exactly the same situation that Barack Obama is facing? His experience in government seems miniscule compared to the challenges he’s facing. And you can be certain that when he assumes the highest office this day week, he will discover a lot more he hasn’t been told.

And yet the world is waiting for Obama with bated breath. I wonder has any democratically-elected leader in history come into office with the hopes of so many people resting on his shoulders?

It seems it will be almost impossible for him to avoid disappointing us if only because our expectations are so high. And yet it does seem as if the moment has met the man. He seems to have the talent and the judgment that is absolutely essential.

And it is clear that he, like Gilmore, is going to insist on fairness in how he addresses the immediate economic future of the United States. There would be a neat irony if a new Irish government were to take office at the same time as Obama, and with a similar political outlook.

There’s only one thing wrong with the scenario. The only way an election can happen is if the present Government decides to hold one, or if they are beaten on a confidence vote in the Dáil. Neither of those eventualities seems very likely, do they?

But there is another way. Here’s a bit of information for you. As Michael Caine might say, “not a lot of people know this”. Under our constitution — Article 16.5 to be exact — the length of a Dáil term can be as long as seven years.

What the article actually says is that “the same Dáil Éireann shall not continue for a longer period than seven years from the date of its first meeting: a shorter period may be fixed by law”.

And a shorter period, a maximum of five years, has been fixed by law a number of times during the years since the constitution was enacted.

The most recent law relating to this is the Electoral Act of 1992, which was a piece of legislation designed to tidy up a lot of outstanding matters in relation to elections — electoral registers, nominations for candidates, all that sort of thing.

Section 33 of that act consists of one simple line — “The same Dáil shall not continue for a longer period than five years from the date of its first meeting”.

A one-word amendment — changing the word “five” to the word “seven” — would be entirely constitutional, and would enable the present Dáil to last until June 14, 2014.

So what, you might say. Even in the worst of times, the Dáil has never lasted longer than five years.

DURING the so-called Emergency — what the rest of the world knew as the Second World War — we had two elections, in 1943 and 1944. Both of them resulted in Eamon de Valera forming a Fianna Fáil government, as indeed he had done before the war started.

Mind you, in 1943, with a war raging throughout Europe, de Valera was put under some pressure to invite members of other parties to join his government. His answer was simple — “I do not believe in it. If it is an answer the deputy wants, I am giving it to him. I do not believe in coalitions. I do not believe they will work.”

But the days when coalitions were scorned are long gone. If there was a shared analysis about what needed to be done, and a willingness to take the hard and balanced measures necessary, a national government could well be formed in the course of a month’s negotiation or less.

The Government is about to embark on negotiations that may well take at least that long with the social partners. It would be possible, were the political will to exist, for a government of all the talents to come together to begin to provide the leadership we desperately need.

If the usual haggling about how power is shared out could be avoided — at least in public — that would be a great start. And it would be possible, by amending the Electoral Act of 1992, to give such a government a full five-year term, starting from now. Possible, yes. But would it be worth considering?