Irish Examiner editorial comment: The 31st Dáil - A mandate for profound reform

WE have just had the most spectacular, groundbreaking election in modern Irish history.

The change has been so sweeping, so very hard-nosed that the inevitable hyperbole can barely describe the reality.

A once almost omnipotent party has been so reduced that it will be little more than a marginalised relic of other times in the 31st Dáil. Even if Fianna Fáil are shocked, and they would not be human if they were not, by the slap in the face they cannot deny that their fate, this day of reckoning decades in the making, was inevitable.

Three other parties have won more seats than ever before and two of these, Fine Gael and Labour, will form the Government. The drama of this great sea change is matched, and possibly surpassed, by the urgent demands facing it.

Unless the coalition partners can very quickly — in days rather than weeks — agree a position and present a strong, unified case for reviewing our IMF/ECB deal and protecting our 12.5% corporation tax rate at the pivotal March 24/25 EU summit, then our road to recovery will be longer and rockier than it might be.

This is the immediate priority as it will define nearly all of the options open to Government. Prevarication would possibly fatally hamstring the Kenny/Gilmore administration. Labour will hold a national convention to formalise their approach, and though they got wonderful support they, and Fine Gael too, will have to compromise to underpin the stability essential for the next four or five years.

Both parties have promised the kind of reform needed to support recovery and this early test provides them with an opportunity to show the steely pragmatism needed to achieve this. Compromises reached at this point need not be permanent and, if economic recovery allows, may be revisited before the next election.

Though it was the day Enda Kenny gave his critics the best possible answer this result, in an historical context, was unimaginable even as recently as May, 2007 when Bertie Ahern was returned to power — or even five years earlier when Fine Gael were humiliated.

Fianna Fáil’s Waterloo was utterly unimaginable when any of Mr Ahern’s predecessors was elected Taoiseach. Though it is just a footnote, the results confirm that not only did Mr Ahern play the central role in the destruction of this country, he was central to the destruction of the most powerful party in our history as well. It will be a long time before we confuse popular support with substance again. Despite all of that it is still hard for anyone of a certain age to believe that Fianna Fáil do not have a TD in 25 constituencies and that they have just one deputy in Dublin. As the rout was confirmed, as one grandee after another was toppled, after one dynasty after another was dismissed, it was hard not to think we were witnessing the kind of break with the past that comes only once or twice in a lifetime.

If you add last week’s comments by Archbishop Martin, that Catholicism was becoming a minority interest in Ireland, then it is even harder to deny that we’ve reached a very challenging watershed.

This unprecedented election silenced too those international voices who accused us of being overly passive in the face of national bankruptcy. It was an almost perfect example of how democracy can more easily achieve what riots and violence only promise.

The election of so many and such a varied a group of independents adds to that feeling, though what real impact this disparate group can have in the face of a united and stable coalition remains to be seen.

Sinn Féin had a spectacularly successful election too, defying critics to more than double their representation. They may learn that the adage about the best way to silence a revolutionary is to give them a seat in parliament has more than a ring of truth about it. They have moved from being a fringe group to something more substantial and will find that significant representation brings responsibilities they may have avoided until now.

Sinn Féin is building an ever stronger base which includes candidates who were narrowly defeated and may, at the next election, make a breakthrough.

It is unlikely another set of Irish politicians will get as powerful a mandate as Fine Gael and Labour have been given this weekend anytime soon. They have the future of this society and its political system in their hands.

Though they carry a burden of over-expectation of almost Obamaesque proportions let us all fervently hope that they have the courage, the steel, the energy, the imagination and the luck needed to build the fair, stable, honest and decent society we aspire to.

There is not a moment to waste.