The political world will begin stuttering into life again this week as Ministers return to their desks in advance of the autumn political term.
The Cabinet is not scheduled to meet until next week, and the Dáil won't return to full sittings until September 27th. However, political insiders say this week will see the end of the holidays as the political and administrative machinery clanks into gear. After the quiet of August there will be a discernible gear shift in life around Leinster House and its environs. It's back to school for everyone.
The long process of Government formation and the settling-in period means Ministers’ in-trays will be particularly congested in September. And from now on, it’s no longer “the new Government”. It’s just the Government.
The decision of the European Commission in the Apple tax case – expected to land in the coming days – will kick-start a flurry of activity as the Government seeks to pick its way through a legal, financial and political minefield. However, this ruling has been anticipated and planned for over several months – it was initially expected to be delivered at the end of last year.
More urgent for the Coalition is to make progress towards agreeing the budget, due on October 11th. According to sources across all parties, the budget will be the biggest political issue of the autumn.
Behind schedule
Most of it happens within the apparatus of Government. While there has been extensive contact at official level between the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the spending departments since before the summer, sources with knowledge of the process say the political involvement with the budget process is considerably behind the usual schedule.
That may be expected, given there are so many new Ministers, but they will be playing catch-up over the coming weeks. Behind the scenes, haggling over spending allocations will take up much time and energy in the work of Government over the coming weeks, even if it is of little interest to the theatre of politics until it reaches the publicly fractious stage.
It will be the first budget presented by the minority Government and the administration will need to show to the world – and to itself – that it is capable of doing it. Reforming the budget process is one of the chief reforms promised in the programme for government, but the reformed, open, inclusive process will not be in operation this year, Government Buildings concedes.
Airing debates
The new
Oireachtas
budget committee has only begun operating and, though it will hold hearings in the coming weeks and produce a report for the end of September, according to its chairman
Fine Gael
TD
John Paul Phelan
, it won’t yet play the role envisaged in airing debates about budget priorities – where to tax, where to spend, who gets priorities in public spending.
Similarly, a new Oireachtas budget office, established to assist TDs from all parties in having an input into the budget decisions, will not be set up until the new year.
It's also not yet clear what role Fianna Fáil will seek to play in the process, though some of the party's TDs have already been vocal over the summer about their preferences. Fianna Fáil's acquiescence, of course, is necessary for the budget to pass.
More pressing, perhaps, will be how the Independent Ministers seek to approach their first budget. Nothing so demonstrates that the former outsiders are now insiders than having to say no to most of the requests they will receive at budget time.
We already know some big things about the budget. The Government will have about €1 billion at its disposal, which it is pledged to use in a ratio of 2:1 between spending increases and tax cuts.
Compare this to some of the hairshirters in the past – €6 billion raised in cuts and taxes in 2010; €3.5 billion the following year – and it looks positively munificent.
But it will not, needless to say, keep everyone in Government happy. Lots of Ministers will not get what they want.
Profound implications
But the budget is only one of the hurdles the Government will face in the autumn term. The biggest ongoing concern for the administration is the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The autumn may make clear what sort of Brexit is being contemplated in Downing Street – hard, soft, slow or fast – any of which will have profound implications for
Ireland
. Nothing is bigger than Brexit on the Government’s agenda.
The Government will also face industrial unrest across a number of sectors, with secondary teachers threatening school closures in the coming weeks in a row over pay and allowances. Minister for Transport Shane Ross will also find himself dealing with pay claims across the public transport network. The Garda Representative Association is also contemplating action.
In all cases, the Government has little option to either hang tough (on public sector pay) or wash its hands (of the transport demands). But it will have to endure a not insignificant amount of flak while doing so.
The abortion question seems destined to dog this administration and autumn will see the Government’s citizens assembly meet to discuss the issue. It will satisfy nobody – at least, it will satisfy none of the activists on either side. Both pro-choice and anti-abortion sides will be preparing for a long public campaign.
Major split
The autumn term will also see at least one Private Member’s Bill on abortion. The last such Bill, in July, caused a major split in the Cabinet, as some Independent Ministers insisted on supporting it, preventing the Government as a whole opposing it. A repeat of this split – which Fine Gael Ministers insisted was a once-off – would be deeply destabilising for the Coalition.
The establishment of an effective modus operandi between Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance Ministers will be one of the most important, unseen processes of the autumn. This has not yet happened to a sufficient extent and the longer a communications gulf exists at the centre of Government, the more likely the Coalition is to trip into a serious row.
Lots of things happen by accident in politics.
Finally, Enda Kenny may or may not have come to a decision over the summer holidays about when he should step down. But he knows he is in the last phase of his career as Taoiseach. When he makes public a decision about his future, the question of the succession will dominate everything else.
The slow-bicycle race is already on, though.
The comings and goings at the Fine Gael autumn think-in – which takes place in a fortnight – will be more closely watched than ever before.
