It was always going to come to this: a government determined by a few self-styled Independents, who tout their freedom from party whips, rules and shackles to speak “common sense” and truth to power, then speedily coalescing to negotiate the positions, perks and privilege of government, before demanding special measures for the part of the group left stranded as government Independents without a title.
It’s called “trying to have it every way”. When Dessie O’Malley made the principled decision to leave Fianna Fáil, he set up the PDs. After the Green Party joined Government in 2020, a few disenchanted members set up Rabharta the following year. The risk and personal investment it takes to leave the comfort and security of the party and pin new colours to the mast is always admirable.
Technical groups see things differently. Usually they commit their doughty Independents to nothing more than membership because anything beyond that would shatter the appearance of independence. But when they take the sweet government inducements as a group then that’s surely as solemn a commitment as any made by a party.
The Regional Independents clearly saw themselves as creatures apart. And so with tiresome inevitability that vast sense of entitlement -gifted by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – crystallised in the recent eruptions in the Dáil.
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Of course, such outbursts happen in other countries, as sages note with a worldly shrug, but images travel. This rumble was stupidly embarrassing for a small state already in the diplomatic doghouse and trading on a perception of stability at a time of huge uncertainty and shifting alliances.
Opposition parties may feel vindicated after Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy’s belated ruling, but they should revisit those clips through the eyes of outsiders.
Any democrat can sympathise with Peadar Tóibín when he talks about having to enter a lottery to question a minister. But anyone who has observed Dáil proceedings also knows that the stakes are in the tank. Unless a mid-level speaker proposes to reveal the third secret of Fatima (a potentially useful intervention right now), the attention is pitiful. Which may be why Micheál Martin believed the public wouldn’t be bothered.
But the public’s problem ultimately wasn’t about low-stakes speaking time, or about terrible political nous: it was about a proposal that utterly failed to pass the public’s bulls**t test. It wasn’t even pretending to be anything but a witless stroke.
A bunch of politicians had already pulled off one stroke in government formation behind closed doors (the appointment of Murphy and other unknown inducements for support) and clearly no longer cared if anyone noticed the second.
The very people who bang on incessantly about the elites’ failure to listen to the plain people – surely every Independent’s raison d’être – were doing exactly what they warned against.
[ Ceann Comhairle rules Regional Independents cannot be viewed as members of the Opposition ]
The cringiest weekend quote was FF TD Paul McAuliffe’s insistence that Michael Lowry “has the same hold over government that I and every other person who supports the Government does”.
A perception of undue influence is not Lowry’s problem, of course, not with all that government support steaming righteously behind him. The problem is for all the other constituencies, the party loyalists and voters wondering how they too might acquire that marvellous mysterious magnetism.
Who believes the FF and FG insistence that no constituency deals were done? Michael Healy-Rae entered government talks declaring his priority was “Kerry, Kerry, Kerry” and on his first day in ministerial office last week had the vibe of a sated man.
“I’m a constituency TD that is using the position that we’re supporting the Government to help put us in a position where we’ll be in a stronger position to further projects in Kerry,” he told the Sunday Independent. But he wasn’t just an independent constituency TD when he said that: he was the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
FG’s Martin Heydon, Healy-Rae’s new boss at Agriculture House, must be thrilled. In a pre-election hustings he told farmers that if enough Independents were elected “it will stymie what a government can do”. Rural voters were complaining, he said, that “the Green tail was wagging the dog” because of all those Independents being elected.
Well, a big chunk of the brand new wagging tail is the one in the flat cap and he’s just down the corridor, delivering a powerful message to voters that plumping for Independents is the way to hit the political jackpot. Suck it up Donegal, it’s all about Kerry.
But paradoxically it was the technical group that behaved most like a normal political party that scooped the pool. The Regional Independents led by Lowry with Seán Canney, Marian Harkin, Barry Heneghan, Noel Grealish, Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran, Verona Murphy and Gillian Toole were so united in their common policy approach that Canney was moved to remark weeks ago that “there’s a lot of commonality within the eight Independent TDs in that group”.
All eight signed up to the programme like a normal political party entering coalition and pledged to support the Government just like a normal political party. There were even fears that Murphy’s loyalty to her non-party party might derail her constitutionally required impartiality as Ceann Comhairle.
An Independent is defined as a TD, senator, councillor or candidate who does not belong to a political party. But what if a technical group is barely distinguishable from a political party? Or Independents form a political party, but continue to describe themselves individually as Independent? Maybe the time has come to redefine “Independent”.
