Greens merely guests in power, Rabbitte tells Dail
Issued : Thursday 14 June, 2007
Speech by Pat Rabbitte TD
Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources
The election of a new Government is one of the great parliamentary occasions and one of the great set pieces in Dail Eireann. It is the first parliamentary outing for members fortunate enough to be elected to Dail Eireann for the first time. It offers the opportunity to make some brief initial remarks on the new Government and to extend good wishes and congratulations to the members who will have the privilege of serving in Cabinet.
In that spirit and in the interests of our electorate and people who sent us here, I wish the new government a fair wind and congratulate its members. I want especially to offer my sincere congratulations to the new Ministers for whom personally today is one they wont forget. In particular I want to acknowledge the achievement of Deputy Ahern on becoming Taoiseach for the third consecutive term. No ifs or buts, caveats or cavilling it is a remarkable achievement. I want to acknowledge that achievement and congratulate him and all who care for him, on an achievement that is likely not to be repeated in modern times.
Napoleon would have approved - Deputy Ahern has been a lucky General. He became Leader of his Party in unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances and he inherited in 1997 the most successful Irish economy since independence. The continued expansion of that economy since then is not the only factor, but is the principal factor, in his latest electoral success.
I am bound to say however that I am convinced that the Taoiseach is fast running out of luck and out of road. I don't know for how long this rickety coalition will last but I suspect that it is designed to survive its main architect. The growing assertiveness of the Finance Minister and the fact that he is being treated by the Taoiseach as if he were the head of a neighbouring state confirms me in the view that the Taoiseach may be taking his leave of us sooner than later.
This entente cordiale between the Taoiseach and Minister Cowen is another pressing reason why all documents relating to the formation of this Government ought to have been laid before the House and should now be laid before the House. The members of this House are entitled to see the content of all deals and side deals that are supposed to be delivered on by this Government. Independent members are running around with "confidential" deals. They include, we are told, deals worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. We don't know if there is an agreement or side agreement with the PDs. We don't know if there is an agreement providing for the transition between the Taoiseach and Minister Cowen.
The Taoiseach has never been known for his sense of humour. But perhaps it is because of his planned early leavetaking that he has inflicted us with such a dolly mixture - to use Dermot Ahern's description of a far saner alliance - of a government. Well what a dolly mixture we have now - Fianna Fail, the Greens, the remnants of the PDs and Deputy McGrath and his unique backing group. Wherever former Deputy McDowell is resting I hope someone is holding a wet towel to the noble forehead.
We now have a dolly mixture of a government heading into what the Taoiseach says are more difficult economic times with nothing in common other than a determination to be in power. A Government with two diametrically opposed parties, both with Acting Leaders, and a third party with the Leader on the way out. Is this the best type of government to confront the economic challenges ahead?
Most informed citizens will be incredulous that Mary Harney and Trevor Sargent have been prepared to enter government with Mr Ahern without challenging him to provide reassurance about questions at the Planning Tribunal that seem incapable of satisfactory answers. Both deputies insofar as we know have been prepared to walk into such a government with their eyes open. If they have raised this important issue then this House should be advised of the outcome.
It has not yet been commented upon that the Greens and the PDs have been happy to reinstate on to the legislative agenda a Bill to give the government the power to shut down the Tribunals. When this was attempted during the 29th Dail, the Green Party vehemently opposed it being taken.
I want to offer my congratulations to the two new Ministers from the Green Party and I wish them every success. They will need to chalk up regular successes from here because they have got off to an unfortunate start. They approached the negotiations for government with only one clear objective: whatever happens we must get into power. Political power is taken by those in a position of political strength and the Greens are not in that position. They are not needed by this Government and therefore they were not in a position to demand policy goals and so they didn't win any policy goals. Of course, there are reviews and commissions and analyses and some minor worthy achievements.
But this remains a Fianna Fail government where the Greens are guests in power. If the two new Ministers are to prove otherwise they will need to be more canny in the conduct of their departments than they were in the negotiations just concluded.
It is difficult to argue with Dan Boyle's own summary of the negotiations when he told the Examiner: "It is not a great document, it may not even be a good document, but it does contain good elements and those elements come from us."
When you look at the checklist of big ticket items on the Green Agenda before the Election, it doesn't make for easy reading:
- We will re-route the M3 to protect the Tara landscape
- We will scrap the private hospital building plan and we will withdraw tax reliefs from private hospitals and reallocate them to public healthcare provision
- We will stop the use of Shannon by American military in time of war
- We will stop Mountjoy being moved to Thornton Hall
- We will end corporate funding of political parties
And the list goes on. Deputy Sargent told the Portmarnock Residents Group, UPROAR, that in government he would stop the second runway at Dublin Airport and Deputy Gormley promised to stop the incinerator at Ringsend. No party to a Coalition arrangement can get everything it desires but by any standards this is a remarkable surrender
I do not want to rain on the Green's parade, but I have great difficulty in understanding the party's approach to installing themselves in government. It is almost as if the Green Party has evolved a new ideology that believes that policy doesn't count with the people so long as they are around the Cabinet Table. The proposition advanced by Deputy Gormley that the Greens were negotiating a government with Fianna Fail and whatever other parties and individuals wanted to join, would be of no consequence. And so we had the spectacle of Fianna Fail negotiating with the Greens; while Fianna Fail was negotiating with the PDs; and while parallel discussions were going on with the Independents. At no stage, we are told, did the parties to this new government actually meet around a table or compare notes.
In this strange process and on their own admission, the Greens were forced by Fianna Fail to cede all their most important policy objectives - other than the not insubstantial one of winning two cabinet positions. For example, Deputy Gormley as recently as April 29th, when launching the Party's policy on health - the defining issue of the campaign - said:
'There are very few people on the front lines of medicine who advocate co-location. Indeed many respected health experts have described the idea as 'cloud cuckoo land'. If we want to improve our public health service then we must invest in public beds, not private for-profit hospitals............ The Green Party is making it clear today that we will scrap these plans'.
Turn to the Programme for Government - nothing has changed on co-location. In fact, Minister Harney, even before the first Cabinet meeting, has slapped down the Greens for misrepresenting the scale of the co-location planned by her.
And so it is on so many other important policy aspects the Programme for Government is a Green-free zone. The word 'review' appears in the document 56 times, the word 'examine' appears 23 times and the term 'consider' makes 14 appearences.
Deputy Sargent made plain on many occasions that, like 91% of the Green voters, he was opposed to putting Fianna Fail back in power. I respect the decision of Deputy Sargent to resign his leadership. But there was another way for Deputy Sargent to honour his promise to the people; he could have refused to put Fianna Fail back in government. Instead, Fianna Fail is very much back in government and the Greens are merely guests in power.
