AS The Irish Times reported, “the Fianna Fáil ard fheis is not what it once was”.
For a start, Saturday’s gathering was not heaving with thousands of those that Myles na gCopaleen used to satirise as ‘the plain people of Ireland’ who populated ard fheisanna in days gone by. In fact, for years now the ard fheis has had noticeably fewer numbers, as the party crashed from its glory days after the disastrous 2011 election.
However, there are other more important differences from the numbers and types of people attending. Observers used to wait for what the leader of Fianna Fáil had to say about the north. They’d wait in vain for Micheál Martin to make pronouncements.
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The only oblique mention was Martin’s pet personal device for avoiding addressing problems here, his Shared Island programme, a list of cosmetic projects like waterways and greenways and grants to various institutions, the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie.
The result was that, unlike in the past, the FF leader’s speech was hardly reported at all in the north because he had nothing to say. It was left to journalists after his speech to raise the questions Martin was avoiding, like what’s happening with Stormont and the DUP, and would he enter a coalition with Sinn Féin?
On the first question Martin let the cat out of the bag when he said talks between the DUP and the British had come to a conclusion (a claim the NIO rushed to deny), thereby confirming what we all know: Donaldson can’t persuade his party to accept the British offer because the protocol remains.
Martin did go on to say he would be “seeking clarity” from the UK Government on how the north would be governed if there was no return of devolution. He referred to the problems in health and education budgets and waffled about “the fiscal situation and the budgetary situation”.
Not good enough. Since the Irish government is joint guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement (which Martin claimed in his ard fheis speech as a FF success), whose present parlous state the British government is responsible for, to approach the British as a supine supplicant is wrong.
What are the Irish government’s proposals? What is the Irish government’s policy? In this respect Martin is hamstrung and the reason lies in the second question journalists posed. Would he go into coalition with SF?
Martin quickly became tetchy in response, denying the premise of the question, namely that, languishing 12-14% behind SF in the polls, FF would be the junior partner, something Martin finds unthinkable.
His present stance is that he is opposed to all SF policies. “We don’t align with SF… from the EU right across to the economy, pro-enterprise etc.”
On the question of the north, on constitutional change, Martin has frozen himself and FF out of the conversation because he can’t be seen to align with SF. He won’t even say the words Irish unification, instead talking to the BBC about “new political configurations across the island”. Doh.
Now, the consequence of this stance is that Micheál Martin has had to ignore the clamour from northern nationalists for constitutional change, as evidenced once again in the latest opinion poll showing 88% of nationalists think the British should publish the criteria for calling a border poll.
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Martin’s problem is that the vast majority of northern nationalists – 78% last May – vote SF. So, aligning himself with northern nationalist opinion means not merely supporting SF but joining with their political demands. He even had to cut adrift the poor old SDLP, now on 6% in the polls, from their ill-conceived ‘partnership’ with FF because he couldn’t support the SDLP leader’s policy which now apes that of SF on a border poll.
As a result, there you have the answers to the questions 'what are the Irish government’s proposals for governing the north without a Stormont executive?' and 'what is the Irish government’s policy on the north for constitutional change?'
The second question first. There is no policy because it would have to be the same as SF’s. This position is shockingly intellectually dishonest because everyone in the Dublin government knows there’s only one direction of travel and they’re actually preparing for it.
The Economic & Social Research Institute has been conducting comparative analysis since Brexit on the north’s productivity, education standards, life expectancy, health policy, etc, studying what the gaps are north-south and how to fill them. The ESRI knows how much and long it will take. So does the government, but shh, don’t mention it.
On the first question, urgent financial action, the answer is obvious, but to utter it would leave Micheál Martin sounding suspiciously like SF’s Conor Murphy, and you can’t have that.
The net effect is to abandon northern nationalists. That leaves the Irish government, but particularly FF, with no policy at all on the north.
