Irish Examiner View: Compromise or failure the only choices

Some years ago, around the time anti-water charges protests peaked, some voices with roots in the conservative tribes dominating our politics warned that the country was on the cusp of being ungovernable and, therefore, all but invited catastrophe.

That judgement cum browbeating was not offered because a great number of people took a leaf out of the French playbook on the power of street protest but rather because the turn-and-about-turn hegemony of our two political grand dames was slipping away.

Their road ahead looked unfamiliar and uncomfortable so the prospect of change was tinged with threat.

Those voices warned that an increasingly diverse, fragmented Dáil would make consensus difficult. We may this week, or even as early as today, find out if they were right or not.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are expected to respond to Green Party demands offered last week for their support in forming a government early this week. That response, or rather those responses — a united one might close other doors — will show if the old grand dames have accepted their new reality, that like an aging actor lead roles are far harder to win than they once might have been.

Those responses will show if the “natural parties of government” have evolved and might facilitate ideas other than their own or still imagine they are haggling to secure a temporary little arrangement so their pre-eminence might continue.

As ever, the vocabulary is revealing. That the Greens, or any other minor or not so minor party prepared to support an unprecedented FG/FF alliance, have “red line demands” while the grand dames have “non-negotiable principles” suggests that, almost three months after the election, the shadow boxing and the discomfort with challenge endures.

There is little enough shadow boxing around the Greens’ primary objective — a water-tight commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 7% in each year of any government’s life. That would require social, cultural and economic change on a par with the political change a government made up of FG/FF would represent. If it seems merely rational that FF/FG might work together, or, dare it be said, finally merge then it is at least equally rational that we, finally, grasp this climate crisis nettle.

The Greens suggest this might be achieved by cutting the national herd; freezing plans for a third runway at Dublin Airport; higher air passenger taxes; city congestion charges; massive investment in public transport; rewetting bogland, and stopping major road projects. It does not require the perception of one of the 6.9 milion cattle in the national herd to imagine the private response of some earthier members of FG or FF to those conditions especially as they, maybe their fathers too, spent a lifetime in pursuit of those objectives. The irony of their situation, that they face these unpalatable choices only because they did not address this issue with any sincerity, may be lost too in their harrumph of indignation.

Though there are alternatives to the FG/FF/G trinity it, this week at least, looks the most likely to fly. Which raises the obvious question: If that partnership cannot be achieved what options remain? How viable might they be? Would they offer the stability, the willingness to deliver very hard, unpopular decisions in a post-pandemic world? The answer is, again, subjective but if that trinity cannot be consummated then we move a step closer to an election.

The pandemic suggests autumn is the earliest possible opportunity for one. In normal circumstances that might clear the air. However, these are not normal times which suggests all parties need to revise the manifestos they offered in February — unless by some miracle of evolution they learn to compromise and work together in a way that maximises the opportunity and stability now essential. That this seems as much a pipedream as a possibility tells its own sad story.