“He’s away,” came the reply from the Minister’s number. “I have his phone.”
Wise man.
Time to pack up for a few weeks. Leinster House is already a ghost town. There’ll be a “fairly perfunctory” Cabinet meeting on Tuesday with a few bits and that’s it.
With an election looming, the political class didn’t get much of a break last summer. At Christmas, there was a government to be formed. So lots and lots of people in all parties and none, and the people who work for them, are looking forward to the summer break. It got under way this week and will definitively start this weekend. For many, it’ll be the first proper holiday in two years. No wonder they’re leaving the phones behind.
It has been a peculiar, frazzled political term since the Coalition was formed six months ago. Its genesis was bathed in controversy over the role of Michael Lowry and the nature of the deals – including changes to the Dáil standing orders – cut with the Independents. At the time, there was much hyperventilating about the threat to Irish democracy presented by the new administration. Those claims look a little hysterical in hindsight. How much time and effort did we all waste on them?
Other charges laid against the new administration hold more water. It could hardly be said that the new Government hit the ground running; at times it barely seemed to have managed more than a leisurely stroll.
Despite early promises to take “difficult decisions”, there has been no step change in housing. In fact, many indicators are going in the wrong direction. A series of moves by the new Minister for Housing James Browne, including changing apartment design standards to make them smaller and cheaper, may bear fruit in the future.
But the Government does not look – yet anyway – like it is turning the housing crisis around. Despite much talk about a housing emergency, there is no real sense that the Government has moved to an emergency footing. You could say the same about pressing infrastructure needs in water and energy. To be honest, you could say the same about a lot of things.
Relations between the two parties are businesslike, but not warm. The important business is done at leader level and there is an undercurrent of disharmony between them – if it’s not mistrust, it’s something approaching that. It is certainly not the case that there is sense of unambiguous common purpose. The strong and co-operative relationship between Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers covers a lot of the cracks.
It has hardly been a period of unbridled joy for the Opposition, either. Sinn Féin responded to the disappointment of the election result by reverting to a hyper-combative stance, turning the dial up to 10 on every issue.
There were signs of a more united approach among the various parties, with some TDs hailing the emergence of a united left-wing opposition which could serve as the basis for a left-wing government in the future.
For a time, especially during the rows over the changes to Dáil procedures, the leaders of the smaller Opposition parties looked like Mary Lou McDonald’s supportive frontbenchers. Some of them looked happier at this role than others. There are audible rumblings in the Labour Party, not just because of its historic antipathy to Sinn Féin (not shared by the Social Democrats), but because many Labour people suspect that Sinn Féin’s growth will come at the expense of other left-wing parties, not Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Meanwhile, there is semipublic wondering about the future of its own leader going on in Sinn Féin at the moment – a most unusual state of affairs for that party.
Seldom have international affairs weighed so heavily over an Irish administration. The economic impact on Ireland of the unpredictable and destructive policies pursued by Donald Trump is the biggest challenge – and the greatest unknowable – facing the Government and the country this summer. A trade deal between the EU and the US reportedly hangs in the balance this weekend – but even that may deliver a general tariff of 15 per cent. No deal means a trade war, and higher tariffs on both sides. For a start, that would tear up the Government’s budget numbers, even before it began making itself felt in the real economy.
The outlook is more threatening for the Irish economic model, and the prosperity it has delivered, than at any time since the financial crisis. It may yet dwarf all the other challenges facing the Government.
The other international issue that was a staple of our politics every week – there cannot be a parliament in Europe that saw Gaza discussed more than the Dáil – and will require decisions in the autumn is the Occupied Territories Bill. Both Opposition and Government politicians are increasingly appalled by Israel’s actions in Gaza; only the Government has to decide what to do about it.
The bill will shortly emerge from pre-legislative scrutiny. In the autumn, the Government will have to decide what it’s going to do with it, and specifically if it will include services in its scope. This is in the face of an increasingly vigorous campaign against it – confirmed by two senior multinational executives – by the Israeli lobby in the US. You don’t have to like that to take it seriously.
A cold, hard reading of how exactly Ireland’s interests and values should balance will be necessary: that is something to which many people in Government are very much not looking forward.
For leaders, ministers, TDs, advisers, mandarins and officials of all stripes, on the beaches, golf courses, sun loungers and poolsides, up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen, the holidays are deserved and needed. Seldom have they felt so much like the calm before the storm.
