ON Saturday last Dick Spring told the Labour Party conference in Limerick: "I will not recommend any form of coalition with either of the parties that make up the centre right alternative, the Progressive Democrats or Fianna ... I am saying that we should rule out a Fianna Fail/Labour government in the aftermath of this election.
His speech offered no explanation for ruling out another coalition with Fianna Fail, but separately from that speech he and other Labour spokesmen have said that trust had broken down between Labour and Fianna Fail, that the experience in government with Fianna Fail was such as to make another coalition deal with them impossible.
There is a problem with these explanations, the only ones on offer in justification for the promised obstruction of the constitutional role of TDs to form and elect a government. The problem is that the Labour Party agreed to go back into government with Fianna Fail after all the traumas' of the Father Brendan Smyth case, the appointment of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court, the revelations over the now infamous but' forgotten Duggan case.
On the evening of Sunday, December 4th, 1994, Dick Spring and Bertie Ahern met and acknowledged that they would be forming a new Fianna Fail Labour coalition government two days later on Tuesday, December 6th. That would have been a mere three weeks after the Duggan case surfaced in the Dail.
The trauma and the alleged breach of trust had been resolved. Dick Spring had spurned entreaties from John Bruton and was ready to form another coalition arrangement with Fianna Fail. That government, under Bertie Ahern, didn't come into being not because of any other breach of trust or any new revelation of what had gone on previously, but solely on the basis of an article in this newspaper on the morning of December 5th, 1994.
The essence of that article was summarised in its first sentence: "The Taoiseach, Mr Reynolds, sought the resignation of the then President of the High Court, Mr Harry Whelehan, on the evening of Monday, November 14th, because of the significance of the Duggan case..."
According to Dick Spring, this revelation changed everything. On Sunday, December 11th, 1994, Dick Spring told the late Mark Lane, on RTE's This Week programme: "The situation changed utterly last Monday from the point of view of the Labour Party." Later in the interview he acknowledged he had known previously of the approaches made to Harry Whelehan on November 14th and 15th, but, obviously, it was the specific "revelation" that an attempt had been made on the evening of Monday, November 14th, to get Harry Whelehan to resign that swung the issue for him.
WE now know that Albert Reynolds did not try to get Harry Whelehan to resign on the evening of Monday, November 14th, 1994. In his evidence to the Oireachtas committee that examined those events, the then Attorney General, Eoghan Fitzsimons, said he asked Harry Whelehan to defer his swearing in as President of the High Court from the following day (see Report of the subcommittee of the Select Committee on Legislation and Security, pages 54 and 55). The request for resignation was made on the following evening and the significance of the article turned entirely on the resignation request being made on the Monday rather than on the Tuesday (if true, it would have been proof positive that the Fianna Fail Ministers fully appreciated the significance of the discovery of the Duggan case and that Albert Reynolds's endorsement of Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court was based on a lie).
In any event, it hardly mattered, for on Wednesday, November 15th, 1994, Maire Geoghegan Quinn had made a full disclosure that she and the other Fianna Fail Ministers knew of the Duggan case on the Monday and that reference should have been made to it in the speech of the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, on the Tuesday. She said (Dail debates, vol 447, No 2, Col 421): "When the additional information (on the Duggan case) became known to me and to other Fianna Fail members of the Government last Monday, I felt, rightly or wrongly, that as Minister for Justice I should have ensured, as I said, that the Taoiseach included that new information in his speech. I greatly regret not having done that."
So strongly did she feel about her own culpability in failing to disclose the information that Fianna Fail Ministers had known on the Monday that she offered her resignation. So what was the significance of the article of December 5th, 1994, published nearly three weeks after Maire Geoghegan Quinn's speech?
THUS, a mere 2 1/2 years ago, Dick Spring was quite happy to rejoin a Fianna Fail Labour government and this was after all the traumas of November, 1994, after the rows over the beef tribunal report, the passport affair (actually there was no row about that at all for Dick Spring found that everything was fine), judicial appointments and the reform of the courts system and whatever.
So what has happened since December 4th, 1994, to justify such a pronounced shift of position?
It is reasonable for Dick Spring to prefer to return to government with his present partners, given that relations between the parties in government have been good. But what could justify his promise to urge Labour delegates "with all the conviction at my command that we should go into opposition rather than into government (with Fianna Fail)?"
The answer, of course, is that nothing at all has happened but that the opinion polls suggest that if Labour does not make such a commitment it may lose far more seats than it will otherwise lose. It is a purely cynical calculation, founded not at all on a shred of justification or at least of justification that could be owned up to.
Dick Spring's memory is notoriously short. It may be recalled what he said about John Bruton two months before going into government with him. On October 13th, 1994, the Sunday World published a story about the use of the Government jet by Kirsti Spring, wife of Dick Spring.
On the basis of the story, John Bruton made a statement critical of what allegedly had happened. Dick Spring reacted furiously. He said: "John Bruton knows me well enough to contact me about the accuracy or otherwise of such a story. Instead of doing so he has chosen to attack my wife on the basis of an untrue story.
"In my time in politics, I do not recall one politician attacking the wife of another in circumstances like these. By doing so he has cheapened the office he holds and he has forfeited any respect I had for him."
Who knows what a further two months will do to Dick Spring's memory?