The Coalition Government, and particularly the central hub of it around the Taoiseach’s office, has undergone the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown in the past week.
The breakdown will not be fatal for the Government. Barring a last-minute accident (though you would hardly rule that out at the rate things are going), the Coalition will survive the motion of no confidence on Wednesday.
Unlike the last comparable government collapse, when then Labour leader Dick Spring withdrew from Albert Reynolds' Fianna Fáil-led coalition in a complicated row over a missing file, a paedophile priest and a judicial appointment, those in a position to bring the Government down, especially in Fianna Fáil, do not want to do so.
Fianna Fáil’s unwillingness is a result of a number of judgments Micheál Martin has made. Firstly, about the issue itself. Secondly, despite all the incompetence of the past week, Martin does not believe that there was malicious intent on the part of the Coalition.
But it is also a judgment about Fianna Fáil’s interests. The political and polling trends are moving in the direction of Fianna Fáil leadership of the next Government and a sudden, disruptive election might threaten that.
However, though the Government will likely survive, the affair has shone a deeply unflattering light on the inner workings on this administration.
Deeply dysfunctional
The system of cabinet government, the basis of how our democratic political decision-making in government works, has now become deeply dysfunctional. The failures of political and communications management that have exacerbated the difficulties in recent days are significant, but secondary. More serious is the functioning of the Cabinet appears to have broken down.
Cabinet government has at its heart collective decision-making on specialised issues. That requires ministers to share with their colleagues information about proposed actions, whether they are spending decisions, legislation, security or welfare matters, or whatever. It is clear – Ministers have confirmed it themselves – that this no longer happens routinely.
Katherine Zappone and the Taoiseach withheld information from last week's Cabinet meeting, largely because they did not trust their colleagues. In her defence, she claimed that sensitive memos – usually seeking cabinet decisions – are routinely not circulated before meetings as the rules require.
This means that ministers are deciding on things about which they do not know enough – or anything.
In the frantic who-said-what-when of the past week – which has itself revealed many important things – nobody seems to have realised that this is important. But it is. It goes to the heart of a functioning Government.
Unmitigated disaster
But if the Government is damaged, for the Taoiseach the past week has been an unmitigated disaster, deeply and probably fatally corrosive of his authority within his own party.
The contradictions in the Taoiseach’s accounts of his actions continued on Tuesday in the Dáil – Zappone did tell him, she didn’t, she did, she sort of did – horrified his own party and alarmed the Independent Alliance. It also gave the controversy a new turn on Tuesday night, a further revolution of the news cycle, another round of questions. That has been the sequence of events since last week.
The impatience with the Taoiseach in his own party – among the middle ground, not the acknowledged dissidents – is turning into something harder, more restless, and more immediate. The fallout from this affair for him will continue, perhaps ruinously.
Conspiracy
But the most important questions arising from the McCabe controversy are not political. They relate to policing and the administration of justice. The Government is now to set up a tribunal of inquiry – with all the legal and judicial paraphernalia this entails. It is to investigate whether there was a high-level conspiracy in the Garda Síochána to destroy the life of a serving officer.
Some elements of this conspiracy, if it existed – and there are witnesses to say it did – were almost certainly criminal. So who is going to investigate them? The gardaí? Answering to the people they are investigating?
The combination of the Government’s nervous breakdown and the seriousness of the allegations against the gardaí have come together to push the Government to the brink of collapse. Every day in the past week, the Coalition has tried to assert control over events and to restore stability.
Every day it has failed. On Wednesday, because of the Sinn Féin no confidence motion, they will be forced to stand together. But the damage to the Coalition’s credibility, capacity and longevity has been done, and it is substantial.