ANALYSIS:Fine Gael remains deeply suspicious Labour may yet coalesce with Fianna Fáil – despite its denials
FINE GAEL frontbenchers yesterday insisted the controversial ending of vote pairing arrangements was a good idea, although there was some concession that the party needed to clarify its strategy.
The controversy that threatened to prevent Tánaiste Mary Coughlan travelling to the US, before Labour’s Ruairi Quinn stepped in, has highlighted the lack of trust and communication between the two largest Opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labour. Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael’s communications spokesman, said pairs would be granted only for gatherings of the EU Council of Ministers, North-South ministerial meetings and in cases where TDs were suffering from serious illness.
Varadkar added that the Government needed to behave with “courtesy” towards Fine Gael, saying his party was asked for a pair for the Tánaiste last week for a trip that had been many months in the planning. “They’ll get their pairs, but only when we say so.”
The Dublin West TD said the tougher arrangement also created some difficulties for Fine Gael: he had hoped to attend the Irish Wind Energy Association conference in Galway tomorrow but now could not do so because he would not be paired.
“It does create problems for us too but the priority now is to get them [the Government] out.” Varadkar said while relations between Fine Gael and Labour were not hostile, there was no structured co-operation and fear remained that, despite Labour leader Eamon Gilmore’s repeated denials, Labour would be prepared to govern with a weakened Fianna Fáil.
“How can we trust Gilmore not to go into coalition with Fianna Fáil when he has publicly stated both parties [Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael] are the same? If he gets a better deal, why wouldn’t he take it, just like Dick Spring or John Gormley?” he said.
It’s all a far cry from September 2006, when then Labour leader Pat Rabbitte was Enda Kenny’s guest of honour at the Fine Gael think-in in Sligo. At this year’s think-in at Faithlegg House Hotel in Co Waterford, Kenny revealed he had got the imprimatur of his parliamentary party to refuse pairs for crucial Dáil votes, except in circumstances were Ministers had to be absent for issues of national importance.
The plan to enforce stricter pairing arrangements cannot be traced back to any one person, although it was definitely not Kenny’s idea. Before the summer, the front bench told their leader he had carte blanche to toughen the party’s stance on pairs. The plan originated as a “collective decision” from the front bench, according to environment spokesman Phil Hogan.
The party’s spokesman on finance Michael Noonan said while pairing was a long-established practice in Leinster House “there was a feeling that we should put a stop to that because pairs were never supposed to facilitate Ministers getting bigger votes in their own constituencies”.
Noonan said the Government was taking advantage of the arrangement. “It was being abused. It wasn’t for junkets abroad either.” He said the hardened stance was adopted for two reasons: to eliminate any abuse of the system and to “tighten-up the numbers” in Dáil votes. While Government sources claim there are mixed views within the Fine Gael party in terms of desire for an early election, the party’s deputy leader Dr James Reilly predicted the new attitude to pairing could “terminate this Government’s reign”.
Dr Reilly added: “We are absolutely committed, utterly 100 per cent behind this. We are going to be ruthless in putting pressure on this Government. We are going to put them under the screw in just the way they put the Irish people under the screw.”
The Fine Gael party meets this evening for the first time since the Faithlegg House gathering. In the interim, it has had to deal with the fallout from mixed opinion poll results and Simon Coveney’s tweet about Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s controversial radio interview.
