Interesting news over the weekend, and possibly the most important from the Republic since February’s shock election result that the Greens have decided to go into negotiation for a Programme for Government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.
In the Irish Examiner Professor Gary Murphy is typically blunt in his assessment of the absurd situation the country has fallen into since then:
The 70-day 2016 negotiation process is now the standard template. The Tánaiste, Simon Coveney, says he is hopeful a government can be formed by the middle of June.
Meanwhile he sits at the virtual cabinet table with no less than three ministers who lost their seats in February, a fourth super junior who lost her seat, and a fifth super junior who did not even contest the election.
Last Wednesday, we had the extraordinary spectacle of the junior minister John Halligan, who didn’t contest the election, using a public event to call for the current government to continue in office for another couple of months and “see where we are.”
This is absurd.
He concludes:
The danger remains that no one beyond the rural independents will join the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael alliance. That brings talk of a second election.
Beyond the nightmare of trying to even organise an election in the midst of this awful pandemic all parties should be warned against it. The Irish voter has never been so fickle.
That voter now has worries about the pandemic and its hideous consequences both physically and emotionally.
That voter deserves a government out of February election and that is what all parties should be thinking of now.
Well worth reading the whole thing.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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