INSIDE POLITICS: Greens and PDs can no longer act as if there is no problem with the Taoiseach's finances.
THE POLITICAL climate has been changed by the decision of Fianna Fáil's Coalition partners finally to break their self-imposed silence and seek a response from the Taoiseach to the startling revelations at the Mahon tribunal about the his murky financial dealings. How Fianna Fáil responds to the growing public unease will dictate the final outcome.
The Progressive Democrats and the Green Party were deeply reluctant to get drawn into the controversy about Ahern's finances, but now that they have finally acknowledged there is a problem they can no longer continue to act as if it does not exist.
While senior figures in both parties have tried to minimise the impact of their intervention, they cannot unsay what has been said and feign unconcern at the unfolding tribunal drama.
Since the formation of the three-party Coalition last June the junior partners stuck to the mantra that they would await the findings of the Mahon inquiry before making any judgment. Their nerve cracked during the week as politicians of all parties struggled to come to terms with the evidence given by Gráinne Carruth about sterling lodgements to Ahern's building society account.
The intervention of the two Coalition party leaders on Thursday was largely accidental but it was an accident waiting to happen. There has been growing unease in the Greens and the PDs at the tribunal revelations and the party leaders could not ignore that indefinitely.
The catalyst for the intervention of Mary Harney and John Gormley was an Irish Times report quoting PD Senator Fiona O'Malley as saying the Government's credibility was being undermined by the tribunal disclosures about the Taoiseach's finances and calling on him to clarify the issue sooner rather than later.
When asked about the report, Mary Harney called on the Taoiseach to clarify the issue quickly. That was followed a few hours later by John Gormley's call for a statement from the Taoiseach. Yesterday, the Green Party TD for Dublin Mid West, Paul Gogarty, maintained that if O'Malley had not come out publicly then Harney would not have felt it necessary to intervene and that in turn would not have prompted Gormley to make his statement.
However, this argument ignores the fact that there was already considerable disquiet in the Green Party about the issue. Senator Dan Boyle had given a number of interviews over the past two weeks expressing his concern about the implications of Carrtuth's evidence while Green councillor Nessa Childers drafted a public statement for publication on Tuesday which, in the event was only released on Thursday after Gormley's comments.
At a meeting in Leinster House on Wednesday involving Green Party parliamentarians and councillors a great deal of anxiety was expressed about the implications of the tribunal evidence on the Government and by extension on the Green Party. With the annual conference of the party due to take place in Dundalk next weekend it was clear that a head of steam was building up on the issue and that a response was required.
Similarly, there was growing anxiety within the PDs about the trend of events and it was simply a matter of time before someone gave expression to it. That O'Malley should articulate one of the party's core values in relation to standards in public office was hardly a surprise; the surprise was that it took so long for a senior party figure to do so.
Those at the top in the junior Coalition parties have been understandably reluctant to embroil themselves in the controversy over the Taoiseach's finances, preferring to focus on the areas for which they have responsibility in Government. The Greens believe they have got concessions on a range of issues, particularly climate change, on which they want to deliver while the PD leader wants to deliver on the issue of health reform.
There is also concern in both parties about what would happen next after they had raised the issue of the Taoiseach's finances. "If you draw the sabre you had better be prepared to use it," remarked one TD.
The other side of the coin, though, is that neither of the junior Coalition parties could have retained a shred of credibility if they continued to pretend that the issue did not exist. Both parties have always laid huge emphasis on standards in public office with the Greens campaigning against the notion that payments to politicians of any kind are acceptable.
It was never a tenable position for the Greens to stick to a vow of silence about a controversy which did not simply arise from payments to politicians, but involved the use by the most prominent politician in the country of political donations for his own personal benefit. The activity may have taken place before the adoption of a formal code of standards in public office but it flew in the face of appropriate behaviour by politicians.
The Greens have tried to give themselves room for manoeuvre by taking a softer approach than the PDs and suggesting that Ahern can respond to the questions raised in his own time. The Greens and the PDs will have to make a call on whether they judge the response, whenever it comes, to be acceptable.
Either way, the two parties are going to be in a bind. If they declare the response to be acceptable they will underwrite Ahern without knowing what might happen next at the tribunal. If they do not find his response acceptable they will have to at least raise the prospect of leaving Coalition. The parties must be hoping that Ahern or FF will solve the problem with an early change of leader.