Euro ministers’ move may be more significant than Shortall resignation

IT can be hard sometimes to figure out the long-term significance of political events.

There were two of them last week. One of them got an awful lot of attention in the media and elsewhere, the other a bit less so. But it may be that the less noticed event might turn out to be more important.

No doubt the opposition parties will seize on the discomfiture faced by the Government over the resignation of Roisín Shortall and the events that led up to it. And, of course, that’s what oppositions should do. Roisín’s resignation is deeply embarrassing. Fair or not, it raises immediate questions about Eamon Gilmore’s political management of a difficult inter-personal and political situation.

I’ve known Roisín Shortall ever since she was a local authority councillor. Nobody would ever describe Roisín as clubbable, or one of the lads. Neither has she ever been one of nature’s optimists. But she has held her seat in a highly disadvantaged constituency through bad times and good because the people of that constituency know her, and trust her. She has always “told it like it is”, but she has never let them down.

Roisín Shortall is, and always has been, an issues politician, and she is fearless and single-minded in pursuit of an objective. That’s entirely admirable. There’s no doubt in my mind that she was absolutely determined to be the person who finally brought in a decent system of primary care in Ireland. She would have seen that (and she’d have been right) as a core Labour Party objective.

Hindsight is a great thing, of course. But when Roisín stood up in the Dáil a week before her resignation, in the confidence debate on James Reilly, people generally remarked that her speech notably lacked any endorsement of her political boss. But did no-one hear a ticking time-bomb? Not even when she said, “decisions on where staff are allocated and where primary care centres are located must be transparent and objective based on health need and no other consideration. Primary care centres, just like schools, are essential public infrastructure and should be provided on the same basis”?

Not even when she said “the lack of priority afforded to producing the free GP care legislation has been very disappointing. Allocated funding must be restored to start this key initiative this year. We must also have a clear roadmap that charts the way forward and ends the uncertainty about the future”?

I’ve no way of knowing it for sure, but nevertheless I’ve no doubt whatsoever that all of the Labour ministers must be harbouring serious doubts about the way James Reilly is going about his business. Even if all his decisions are pure as the driven snow, his way of implementing them is totally lacking the grace that is needed. He took some exception last January when I compared him to a very angry bull in a very fragile china shop — but nothing he has done since has proved that assessment wrong.

It will be fascinating to see if Alex White can achieve what Roisin couldn’t. If I could give Alex White one small piece of advice before he says yes to his formal appointment by Government today it would be to demand to see the delegation order that goes with the job, and to cast his own legal eye over it. He needs to have a reasonable degree of autonomy, and reasonable control over his own budget, and that’s the sort of thing that is frequently written in to such orders. If he doesn’t get it, his experience is unlikely to be happier than Roisín’s.

But if it does work out, then there may not be much long-term political significance to Roisín’s resignation. Personally, I believe that her decision to resign could help to change the face of the politics of healthcare in particular, but her decision to also resign from the Parliamentary Labour Party will weaken her influence considerably. It will have turned her own colleagues from feeling that she had been let down to feeling that she has let them down.

It may, in fact, come to be the case that the far more important event last week was the statement by the three finance ministers of Germany, Finland and Holland. As far as one can see, that statement threw down the gauntlet to Ireland, and indeed to the leaders of Europe as a whole.

Last June the European Council decided that it was “imperative” to break what they called the vicious circle between bank debt and national debt, and to do so by the end of the year. And then they want on to say “The Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme”. That was widely, and rightly, seen as a game-changer for Ireland. I wrote here at the time that it would need a lot of hard graft to translate that into concrete results, though I have little doubt it can be done.

And suddenly, out of the blue, three finance ministers (yes, influential ones) decide to say no way Jose. Their statement makes it clear that they would be very unhappy with any decoupling of bank debt from sovereign debt in any way that affects the past. That means they would be very unhappy with any settlement that’s to the benefit of Ireland.

If their view prevails, that would be a disaster for Ireland. In making their statement the three finance ministers are attacking Ireland’s fundamental national interest.

THERE is only one way to respond to that. We have done it very seldom in the past, but we can — and I reckon we will if we have to — bring Europe to a halt through the use of the Irish veto, if this press release by three ministers is allowed to upscuttle the settled policy direction of Europe.

So, that means our Government is in for a battle. The next couple of months will be extremely tough and demanding at the European level. We can expect a lot of long nights, a lot of tough talking, and some of the most difficult negotiations in a long time. It will be a lonely place to be if you’re the taoiseach and the tánaiste. A win will make history. A loss will seal Ireland’s fate for the next generation.

When the Government of Ireland is in a battle like that, it is entitled to — and needs — the support of the people. In the past, opposition leaders like Garret FitzGerald always understood that there was a time to criticise and a time to support. It’s clear from reading last week’s Dáil debates that we don’t have opposition leaders like that any more.

But no matter. I imagine the Government knows that the next three months or so will define its future (and we haven’t even mentioned the budget!). A lot of it, of course, will happen behind the scenes, and probably already is. It’s the kind of background against which the resignation of a minister of state, no matter how difficult and embarrassing that is, might well fade into insignificance.