About three hours into what was billed as the Dáil Reform Committee’s “showdown” meeting on Wednesday evening, Sinn Féin whip Pádraig Mac Lochlainn began to have a small sense of optimism for the first time in a long time that it might all just work out for everybody.
The meeting had been called to try to resolve, once and for all, a controversy that had suppurated like an untreated wound over the past month: the attempts by the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Coalition Government to carve out speaking slots for a small group of Independents, led by Tipperary North TD Michael Lowry, who supported the programme for government.
“I thought,” Mac Lochlainn recalled, “we are having a dialogue here. Perhaps our analysis on how this would play out was wrong. “Then half an hour later, [the Government Chief Whip] Mary Butler quickly shut it all down.”
Butler announced it was clear no agreement could be found. Amid loud protests, she pressed it to a vote. The Government, with an inbuilt majority on the committee, won the vote by 10 to eight.
Cue uproar and the fractious scenes that have been a characteristic of the 34th Dáil since it first sat on December 18th.
Within a short time, the Opposition leaders gave a press conference on the plinth of Leinster House. Each expressed outrage at what had occurred.
“Dangerous,” railed the Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, saying it was “a mockery of any notion of accountability”.
“They are trying to drown out our voices,” said Cian O’Callaghan, deputy leader of the Social Democrats. “This is a return of the bad old days of grubby deals in back rooms between Fianna Fáil and Independents like Lowry.”
The issue of speaking rights for the Lowry group has dogged Oireachtas business over the past six weeks. Not only has it prevented the business of the Dáil and Seanad from proceeding as normal – the selection of Oireachtas committees should have happened weeks ago but that looks unlikely to happen until April – it has also created a rift between the Government and the Opposition that is deeper and more bitter than anything experienced in the 33rd Dáil. Most TDs will tell you the atmosphere of this Dáil is darker.
Tell me any other parliament where a group can be in Government and in Opposition at the same time, and can be given time to question the Government on its own performance. It is farcical
— Senior Fianna Fáil figure
One senior Sinn Féin figure compared it to two groups sitting on the summits of adjacent mountains, well within shouting distance of each other, but neither prepared to descend into the valleys to meet halfway.
The row first reared its head in the week leading up to January 22nd, the day Micheál Martin was to be appointed Taoiseach. It emerged that TDs in the Regional Group who did not hold ministerial positions intended to form an Opposition technical group. That would allow them to participate in Leaders’ Questions, ask priority questions, and also apply for positions on committees.
It was, the Opposition claimed, an old-fashioned political stroke, a “grubby” deal for Lowry and four other Independents in exchange for supporting the Coalition. It led to a full-scale row around the arcane Standing Orders that govern the running of the Dáil, culminating in the chaos in the Dáil on January 22nd.
Technical groups are formed by Independent TDs and micro parties on the Opposition benches to allow them to have speaking time. The minimum number required since 2020 is five TDs.
[ How it happened: Unprecedented and chaotic scenes in the DáilOpens in new window ]
The Opposition’s argument has been consistent: a group that has vowed to support the Coalition for the full term “through thick and thin” cannot be, by definition, in opposition. If Lowry, Danny Healy-Rae and their colleagues were to be allotted time, it had to be Government time.
When Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy ruled the Lowry group could not be classified as a technical group, there it seemed to lie for the Opposition. However, the Government began looking at alternative ways to accommodate it.
That came to a head in the past week.
The Irish Times spoke to three former senior figures from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. All three side strongly with the Opposition.
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Alan Dukes was leader of Fine Gael from 1987 to 1989 and architect of the Tallaght Strategy, the first big parliamentary departure from a binary Government versus Opposition position. The policy committed Fine Gael to support the minority Fianna Fáil on crucial fiscal votes. Dukes describes technical groups as a “polite fiction”, simply intended to give speaking time.
“The current row is just nonsensical. When it comes to the current set of rules, they should simply say to these guys: you speak in Government time as if they are a Government group,” he says unequivocally.
Brendan Howlin, former Labour leader and former Leas-Cheann Comhairle (deputy chairperson) of Dáil Éireann, says he is still agog at what has been suggested.
“It is such a shift in the way parliament has operated since the inception of the Dáil; I think it will be deeply regretted in the future.”
The Fianna Fáil figure, who did not wish to be named, said: “Tell me any other parliament where a group can be in Government and in Opposition at the same time, and can be given time to question the Government on its own performance. It is farcical. It undermines the standing of the Dáil.”
Why did the Coalition not let sleeping dogs lie following Murphy’s ruling?
The Opposition was convinced the Government parties were bound to a non-negotiable ironclad condition, a quid pro quo for the support of the Lowry group.
For its part, the Coalition argued it was trying to reflect the realities of a more fragmented Dáil. Government whips proposed a new form of group: a hybrid group.
Butler then submitted a position paper, proposing a new slot called “Other Members Time”, where Government TDs and these Independent TDs would get two opportunities to ask topical questions of the Taoiseach each week.
Butler said it would be a little over five minutes speaking time a week for the Lowry group. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael backbench TDs liked it too as they were now also getting to ask questions of the Taoiseach for the first time.
“There is strong support on the backbenches to allow us speaking time,” Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne said.
Westminster was cited, where all MPs get a chance to ask questions of the UK prime minister.
Howlin is flummoxed by the arrangement.
“It’s very hard to fathom why the Government is doing this because it makes no sense. In fact, what is proposed now is worse than the original deal. The original deal was obviously simply to give the Lowry Independents the same status and rights as a group in opposition. Now they’ve included all Government backbenchers.
“Maybe it’s the atmosphere of international politics creeping in here,” he said, in a thinly veiled reference to the Trumpian partisanship that has affected US politics.
There’s no doubt the atmosphere of the 34th Dáil has been sour. Following the issue being pushed to a vote, the Opposition withdrew their co-operation to provide “pairs” for Government Ministers travelling abroad, breaking from a parliamentary practice where an Opposition TD abstains from a vote if a Government deputy is away.
Sinn Féin’s Mac Lochlainn contended the Government victory was pyrrhic.
“The big mistake Micheál Martin made is underestimating the resolve of the Opposition. He has actually succeeded in uniting us and actually showing the people for the first time that there could be an alternative government out there,” he said.
Senior Coalition figures consider this an “inside baseball” row that is of little interest to the public. One said the Opposition would be disruptive for the full term, and try to portray a centrist government as Trumpist and right-wing.
“There seems to be an ugly lack of respect creeping in,” said the source.
But was there a deal?
Lowry denied emphatically there was any deal.
“What we have seen in the last couple of weeks is a shameful display of obstruction and belligerence on behalf of the Opposition,” he told The Irish Times.
“The Government has facilitated time to ensure we are allowed to participate in proceedings. That is our democratic right. That’s what we have a mandate from the people to do and the opposition were hell bent on trying to deny us that entitlement.
“This was absolutely essential and crucial for the longevity of this Government. If the government had yielded on this, I think they would be completely undermined. The Government has a majority and is entitled to exercise this majority. We really need to move on now.”
That’s unlikely to happen. TDs from all sides say it has not been fully played out yet and could remain nasty.
