It may seem like a peculiar thing to suggest before it even takes office but the next government is going to face a series of political, economic and structural challenges that will test its cohesion beyond anything the last government experienced.
For a start, I think that the political structure of government and opposition will be particularly disadvantageous to the expected Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Independent government. No matter what it does, it will be characterised by its opponents as a “right-wing government”; it will certainly be faced by a left-wing opposition. In a country that increasingly veers centre-left, this presents obvious dangers.
It will face a daunting challenge on climate action – not just the measures that will be required to avoid massive fines under international agreements to which Ireland is committed, but managing the public resistance to the inconveniences that inevitably accompany the measures. They won’t have the Greens to blame anymore.
An early political flashpoint will be the Occupied Territories Bill. Whatever version of the legislation is eventually proposed to the new Dáil, I think I can say with confidence two things about it: it will not be tough enough for the opposition, and it will be several steps too far for the United States, in both its political and corporate manifestations. Israel has already begun a determined effort against the Bill, designed to demonstrate a significant economic price for its progress. This is already on the minds of several people in government. None of them relish the choices that await.
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But perhaps the greatest challenge facing the government will be the one that confronts every administration: to wrestle the machinery of government into meeting the challenge of delivery. How do you bridge the implementation gap. How do you get the system to produce the results you desire?
Even Liz Truss, whose disastrous premiership was only entertaining if you weren’t affected by it, understood that. She wanted to focus on “delivery, delivery, delivery”. She was useless, but she was right about that. Voters want results and they will be impatient if they are not produced.
You would think that a second-term government would be able to hit the ground running, that ministers would know their way around, and would be able to work the levers more effectively. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes a party that has been in government for a long time grows naturally comfortable with its surroundings. And the system becomes comfortable with them. Long-time ministers are unlikely to demand that long-time officials produce for him or her in two days what they say will take a week. There are meetings to be had, stakeholders to be consulted. Process edges out the hunger for results.
That doesn’t have to happen. A returning government can be more reforming as a first-timer; that was Tony Blair’s experience. But Blair was an exceptional reformer. Will Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have that sort of energy on their second term together; Fine Gael’s fourth?
Nowhere is the need for focus on delivery more acute – or will its failure be more visible – than in housing. I get a strong sense that while a chunk of voters were grudgingly willing to allow Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil more time to fix the housing crisis – partly because they weren’t entirely convinced by the alternatives and also because those with homes themselves don’t want to see a collapse in their value – they will not extend the same patience the next time. It’s delivery or bust.
Targets abounded in the election campaign, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil promising they would build some 300,000 houses in the next five years. This would go some way – not the whole way, though – to meeting pent-up demand. But it is a tall order.
To get an idea of how ambitious this number is, look to the UK where the new Labour government has announced a massive programme of house building, with all sorts of muscular measures to promote building. It will force councils to produce house building plans, introduce a series of planning reforms will make it easier to get permission to build, especially on “green belt” areas around London, and so on.
Labour is promising 1.5 million new homes in the next five years, a target universally acknowledged as enormously ambitious. But if Keir Starmer was going to build at the rate that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are promising, he would have to build more than four million houses.
[ Housing remains a big problem, but I worry the real disaster lies aheadOpens in new window ]
In other words, what is needed is an explosion in house building – and then for those numbers to be sustained. A step change in supply is the only thing that will stop the steady increase in house prices (well, that or an economic collapse) that is pushing the prospect of owning a home of their own out of reach for so many.
Aside altogether from the money this will take – though we are constantly told that money is not the problem – the new government will have to focus on delivery, rather than targets. Administrative, bureaucratic and legal path-clearing for new housing developments will have to become a daily concern of local and national government. New ideas are needed: time-limited tax incentives could be an option to supercharge privately-funded homebuilding. But whatever they do will have to be done with a sense of urgency and impatience that is unusual in Irish governance.
The Irish system, it is often said, does well in a crisis. If the next government really wants to solve – or at least substantially ameliorate – the problem of building enough houses, then it will really have to treat it like a crisis. For a government that will be under political pressure from the get-go, nothing is more important.
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