The two-and-a-half-party system that has characterised Irish politics for a century has come to an end, and complicated minority governments will be frequent in future, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has said.
The Fine Gael TD said the current Fine Gael-Independent administration, which relies on the support of Fianna Fáil to survive crucial votes, would be the first of many such fragile arrangements in the State.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr Donohoe said volatility would be the new norm in Irish politics.
“Some critics see this form of [deep minority] government as being an exception and [say that] Ireland in the coming decades will go back to the governments we had in the past. I am not sure that is the case.
“The form of government here has become the norm in other European countries. This might not become the normal form of government here, but can certainly become more frequent than governments we had in the past.”
Mr Donohoe said the dividing lines in politics no longer aligned with the old left-right dichotomy. The choice in future would be between centre parties advocating stability as well as incremental change, with radical forces from the left and right seeking to “disrupt” the system.
“There is a growing minority of people who believe that system is rigged against them. At a strategic level the challenge that many small and medium-size countries are finding is the failure of government to deliver quickly in a fast-moving globalised world.”
Clustering
Mr Donohoe said this had led to more clustering of those parties “who want the system to work better”. They were arraigned against a “smaller but growing minority” of those who wanted to overturn the system.
“Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Independent Alliance, the Social Democrats and the Green Party are in the space of wanting the system to work better,” he added.
Mr Donohoe identified the provision of public transport in Dublin city as a huge challenge for the Government, and warned of the consequences of not taking action now. He said the Government’s updated capital spending plan, to be unveiled this year, would focus on transport.
“High-capacity public transport solutions in the coming years will be of the most critical importance. There are two issues if we can’t do it. The friction between a growing economy and poor infrastructure will become very evident. [Secondly] there are new requirements [on greenhouse gas emissions] set down by the Paris Agreement post-2020 [that Ireland will fail to meet].”
Mr Donohoe said the Luas cross-city extension, when delivered, would be responsible for an additional 10 million journeys on public transport each year. Major projects such as that would be required several times over. “The challenge is how to replicate that on other high-capacity modes and transport.”
