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100 days are approaching since the general election and finally the time has come to speak.
The negotiating teams of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party will begin substantive discussions today, having agreed on a timetable for the negotiations last week.
While there are vast policy differences between the parties when they try to reach consensus on a program for the government, there is one thing that all leaders have in common: a skeptical party membership that will have to strongly convince that the necessary commitments will be worth it.
Under its rules, each party is required to obtain member approval for any government program. This makes what happens outside of Ag House, where the conversations take place, as important as what happens inside it.
The Green Party even struggled to get to this point.
When he voted his 12 TDs and voted to start conversations, they did so for only eight TDs in favor. Three voted against and two of them are now part of the negotiating team, including Vice President Catherine Martin.
This shows how difficult it will be to obtain an agreement approved by the party membership.
Under Green Party rules, the bar is high. A two-thirds majority is required to approve any government agreement. Those who have been party members for the last six months, about 2,500, will have one vote.
Lorna Bogue is a 28-year-old city councilor in Cork who, when she was president of Greens Youth in 2015, said she got involved in politics “because I’m tired of middle-aged men leaving for the future.” Clearly, his distrust of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil has not softened in the five years since.
“This idea that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are going to deliver things like ending homelessness, ending direct provision, really paying farmers for their work? That’s the problem here. They won’t give us a I try to get all the work done that we are asking for, “says Bogue, who does not believe any program is ratified by members.
She says it is up to the larger parties to persuade her colleagues.
“It is up to them to provide an agreement that the pragmatic grassroots members of the Green Party who are integrated into local communities, who are fighting to protect the environment and the people who live in it can accept. They have to convince us of that and right now what we are seeing is not convincing, “he told RTÉ’s The Week in Politics.
But if the kind of concessions demanded by the Greens are accepted by the negotiating teams of the larger parties, then it will make the deal more difficult for its own members to accept.
“There is a fear, especially in rural areas, about green policies and how quickly they want them to be implemented,” says Fine Gael Councilman John Sheahan, who represents rural Limerick.
He is among a series of councilors who held a Zoom meeting with junior minister Patrick O’Donovan last week. Some of them called on their party to try to form a national unity government until such time as new elections can take place. “What’s the rush?” he asks.
Fine Gael has a complex set of rules to ratify a program for the government. It consists of an electoral college with weighted voting. TDs and senators have a 50% participation, their councilors represent 15%, their executive council 10% and electoral organizations represent 25%.
The party must also, according to the rules, hold a conference of delegates. But that is not possible due to coronavirus measurements.
“There is anxiety at the party. Are you listening to us now that we cannot have a normal Ard Fheis to sanction entry to the government?” Mr. Sheahan asks, echoing similar concerns elsewhere that the virus will limit his opinion.
Fianna Fáil’s rules state that its members, around 20,000, will have full voice when entering the government, decided by a simple majority of 50% plus one.
Micheál Martin last week assured party members that they would have the opportunity to vote, after some councilors publicly expressed concern that they would be left out of the decision-making process.
The “one member, one vote” system was introduced by Martin in 2012 as part of his process to rebuild the party. It’s simpler, but it also makes it harder for him to get an approved deal.
There is intense internal debate within the party about its next steps and what they will mean for the party in the long run.
In a WhatsApp group for party members at the national level, one member sparked a discussion by suggesting: “The government should be left in place until the crisis is over. They are doing well in this crisis in a fair way. It would be folly to change to key ministers now. ” I wanted to leave FG but not yet. “
Michael O’Shea, a Fianna Fáil councilor in Kerry (where support for the alleged deal is tepid at best, according to a recent Radio Kerry poll) said a government involving the Green Party “would decimate rural Ireland “and therefore could not support it. Like some Fine Gael councilors, he supports the idea of a national government until” all this calms down. “
There is also caution in Fianna Fáil to give Sinn Féin a clear execution of opposition seats, which will allow them to build on the achievements of the February elections. There is still an opinion that the party should be open to an agreement with Sinn Féin, despite Martin having ruled it out.
“I personally would have liked to sit down and talk to Sinn Féin and follow his policies line by line,” said Adam Wyse, a Fianna Fáil councilor in Waterford.
But he added: “Now we are talking to Fine Gael and the Greens as two parties that seem open to forming a government that, for me, is the most important thing at the moment.”
It is that pragmatic attitude that the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael hope to finally establish themselves among the bases.
Members may have an opportunity to voice their concerns, depending on the thought, but they will eventually come to an agreement.
But they have doubts about the Green Party’s negotiating team’s ability to bring its members with them, and that leaves the likelihood of a pending government forming.
While the Green Party has flexed its muscles in the process that brought them to this point, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are eager to show that the core values of their memberships will also have a place at the negotiating table.
There are still many moving parts before this coalition puzzle can finally come together. But the process is already starting to look like putting together a jigsaw with a mallet.
If it finally comes together, the irony could be that the government to end the politics of civil war will have opened up a whole new set of internal party divisions.
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