Opinion: Government should rue failure to pursue democratic revolution

THE Government took an important tactical decision yesterday, and the opposition may do so on another issue soon. Both manoeuvres have potentially enormous strategic consequences.

Firstly, the Government decided that to successfully keep water charges legislation on course through the Dáil, that debate will be guillotined tonight.

This judgement is tactically critical. Passing the bill through the Dáil is necessary before it can go to the Seanad, and begin a contentious debate there, whose ultimate outcome is uncertain.

Clearly a view was taken that that this politically critical legislation for revised water charges, could not be allowed slip into next week — Christmas week.

This would have jeopardised the timings of its passage, and perhaps jeopardise the introduction of the proposed and politically critical reduced water charges.

Contingency plans would immediately have had to be put in place.

Simultaneously, the opposition, or elements within it, is considering whether to put down a motion of no-confidence in the Ceann Comhairle Seán Barrett.

In the event they do, both the legislature and the Ceann Comhairle are in uncharted waters.

If a substantive motion is put to the Dáil, Barrett may choose to stand and fight. He has the numbers to win. The Government will certainly back him. Fianna Fáil likely will. So too will some Independent TDs.

However, he will then have to continue in unprecedented circumstances where the Dáil has divided over its chairman.

The efficacy of his office depends in large measure on the voluntary adherence of Dáil deputies to the rules of the House, which they and not he are responsible for changing.

Charges of bias against him are simply unfair.

His every single intervention, under the pressure of ratcheted-up events may not be always pitch perfect. But the bottom line is that he has not shirked his job of enforcing the rules.

The rules are unquestionably a symptom of a dysfunctional, unreformed legislature.

In setting him up as a target, the proposers of a no-confidence motion would be shooting the messenger, when they are powerless and the government is unwilling to substantively change how our legislature is run.

It’s all politics too of course.

With a government on the run, and a nearly-100-year-old party political order in meltdown, Barrett is small fry, given what is at stake.

The stakes are high.

The opposition are playing for the lion’s share of the coming electoral kill.

Their calculation is how, by whatever means, they can best encapsulate public anger, the more to eventually profit by it.

The Government’s decision to press to a vote tonight the water charges legislation was taken against the backdrop of its importance as the centrepiece of its planned pivot toward political recovery.

Its options were either keep the Dáil in session until debate concluded and its majority voted it through, and only then being the difficult process in the Seanad, likely interrupted by Christmas.

The passage of the original legislation to establish Irish Water and provide for water charges, which this new bill is substantially amending, was a low ebb in the recent undistinguished history of the Oireachtas.

The paucity of debate, the ramming through of detailed technical legislation added enormously to a mess of the Government’s own making.

Thorough, reasoned debate would have done two things.

Firstly it would have demonstrated that the Government had listened.

That would have been a defence of sorts when widespread opposition against water charges inevitably happened.

Instead, the manner of the Government’s handling of the legislation played directly and negatively against the very proposition it was intended to fast-forward.

Detailed legislative consideration, would have alerted the Government to at least some of the pitfalls of the proposal it had in the making.

Some mistakes could have been avoided, and it would be less vulnerable now to the political charges of arrogance and incompetence, it left itself wide open to.

The timing of the passage of the bill through the Dáil is important, precisely because its successful passage through the Seanad is so uncertain.

The political chicanery involved in the nomination of John McNulty to the Seanad seat vacated on the election of Deirdre Clune to the European Parliament has left the Government short of a critical vote when it needs every possible one, including those of Independent senators nominated by the Taoiseach, to muster a majority.

At the very least, there is a serious question as to whether the bill can be passed by both Houses by Christmas, without another guillotine.

More fundamentally if the Government cannot get the bill through the Seanad it is delayed for 90 days, before the Dáil may, under Article 23 of the Constitution, pass it again over the opposition of the Seanad.

Such a legislative mess will not be the pivot towards political recovery charted by the Government.

It will be a gathering bandwagon for an issue the Government desperately needs to put to bed. But legislative mess is only part of the problem.

The immediate problem is that the existing higher water charges, minus the planned “conservation grant” of €100 per household, is pending the passage of replacement legislation, the law of the land.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar held up the spectre of higher charges under the existing law, as the consequence of Senators defeating and thereby delaying the new legislation.

The problem is that threatening mainly appointed Independent senators with little hope of another term is impractical.

The most dangerous people in any organisation are those standing nearest the door, the very senators the Government needs to bring on side.

Events will show the usefulness of Varadkar’s intervention.

My view is that if the Seanad puts it up to the Government, it dare not, and neither backbenchers nor the Labour Party will allow it, proceed with the current unchanged water charges regime.

Politically a Seanad defeat is potentially a nightmare scenario.

The partisan politicisation of the Ceann Comhairle’s role is symptom, not cause of the dysfunction of unfit institutions.

In the event of a no-confidence vote he can stand and win as one means to uphold his office.

Alternatively he may emulate the action of President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in 1976.

Occupying an office above politics, that president choose to honour it by resigning.

Sinn Féin previously considered, but backed off attempting to unseat the Ceann Comhairle.

The latest furore follows clashes with Róisín Shortall last week.

She, however, is not a member of any Dáil group and this threat too may dissipate.

Today, however, there are layers of uncertainty being pursued in the context of unprecedented political flux.

All are symptomatic of a system that is fundamentally failing, where no agenda for substantive reform is in sight.

The Government should rue its failure to pursue its promised democratic revolution.

The opposition should realise that institutional reconstruction will be much more difficult than the pot shots it is enjoying taking now.

There are layers of uncertainty being pursued in the context of political flux