Sinn Féin’s motion of no confidence in the Government was designed to exploit unease in the Coalition parties and put them under pressure in the week the Dáil adjourned for the summer recess. In the event, it only served to demonstrate that the Coalition is able to command a comfortable majority after two difficult years in office.
Sinn Féin was perfectly entitled to put down a confidence motion to test the unity of the Coalition and, in the process, highlight what it regards as the policy failures of the past two years, but in contrast to the soaring rhetoric of party leader Mary Lou McDonald, the outcome was something of a reality check with the Government winning by 85 votes to 66. Instead of generating political instability and exposing cracks in the Coalition, the vote showed that the Government is actually more secure than many had anticipated and even has the capacity to attract support from outside its own ranks when the need arises.
Sinn Féin speakers strongly criticised the Government’s performance but the response of Coalition speakers was equally robust. Taoiseach Micheál Martin welcomed a debate “between those who believe in tackling problems, and those who believe in exploiting them” through populist politics. McDonald accused the Government of being “out of touch, clearly out of ideas and now out of time” and claimed the Coalition was coming apart at the seams. The trigger for the no confidence motion was the decision last week of Donegal Fine Gael TD Joe McHugh to resign the party whip and vote against the Government’s €2.7 billion mica redress scheme.
Given that Fianna Fáil TD Marc MacSharry had resigned the Fianna Fáil whip last year and two Green Party TDs, Patrick Costello and Neasa Hourigan, lost the whip more recently, the Coalition is theoretically in a minority with 79 seats in the 160-member Dáil. In fact there was never much chance of McHugh or MacSharry voting against their own parties in a confidence motion and the same applied to the two Green TDs, but what really secured the Government’s position was the support of a number of Independents.
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Two former Fine Gael TDs, Michael Lowry and Peter Fitzpatrick, were among the Independents who voted for the Government as did Kildare South TD Cathal Berry, the doctor and former Army Ranger who has engaged in talks with the Government on the issue of defence spending.
In the longer term the number of Independents prepared to back the Coalition gives it a potential cushion if any of its own members defect in the future. It also indicates that there is a cohort of Independent TDs who may be willing to play a role in the formation of a future government with the current Coalition parties if the numbers add up after the next election.