Here's How – Here’s How 103

Malcolm Byrne won the 2019 bye-election for Fianna Fáil, but did not retain the seat at the general election. He was then elected to Seanad Éireann. Robin Cafolla is chairperson of the Green Party’s Climate Forum. His questions, which informed my interview were first published on Twitter. The Green Party has asked a slightly less-focussed set of questions of their larger rivals.

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Right now, there is what might be a courtship dance going on between the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on side, and the Green Party on the other, as to whether the Green Party will join a three-party coalition to form a government.

I spoke to some senior Green Party sources at the time of the election, and they said that to join any coalition, they would want to be both wanted and needed in that coalition. What that meant, they explained was two things. Wanted meant that the other parties had to be at least amenable to the policies that they wanted to pursue.

Clearly all parties have policy differences, but If they were only there for making up the numbers, and there was no meeting of minds, that would not, in their view, lead to a government worth their while being part of.

Being needed meant that the proposed government would have to rely on Green Party TDs for their majority. If the government could function without them, they would have no leverage, and they would be fools to take responsibility for decisions they had no real power to influence.

I have a interview coming up, where I put some of the realities of the Green Party intent to a Fianna Fáil politician. It’s a longish interview, so I’ll keep my own thoughts short enough here. You can judge for yourself how many straight answers are forthcoming in that interview and whether that would indicate if the Greens are wanted in government or not.

But that’s a soft, values-based judgement. The question ‘are they needed?’ That’s straight maths. The civil war parties did spectacularly badly in the election, by a huge margin their worst combined result ever. But they still got a lot of votes, more than 43 per cent, and 72 seats, not counting the Ceann Comhairle. That leaves them eight seats short of a majority of 80.

You can see how the 12 Green Party TDs votes would come in handy. But would they really be needed. There were 19 independents elected last February as well. Some of them, like Catherine Conolly from Galway or Thomas Pringle from Donegal are quite left-wing and unlikely to be well disposed to supporting a Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael coalition. But most of them have strong ties to one or other of those parties and some have a long record of supporting them in government.

Not counted in the Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael 72 are former Fine Gael TDs Peter Fitzpatrick, Michael Lowry, and Denis Naughten. There’s also former Fianna Fáil TD Mattie McGrath. That brings them to 76. There’s also former Fianna Fáil councillor Richard O’Donoghue, now a TD, and former Fine Gaelers Verona Murphy and Matt Shanahan. That’s 79; and that’s even before looking to other independents who have a record of supporting the last Fine Gael minority government Seán Canney and Noel Grealish. There’s 81, that’s a majority straight away.

If any of them went overboard, there’s still the Marian Harkin, Michael McNamara and the Healy-Raes, that gives a total of other TDs likely to be open to supporting a Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael government of 13, that’s one vote more than the Green Party can offer.

There are two scenarios here. One is that the big parties could form a government with the independents straight away. That might happen, it might not. Another scenario is that they could take in the Greens, and if they ever got too troublesome, remind them that they aren’t all that needed and that if they don’t like, it, the big parties have other options.

This would put the Greens in an impossible position; they would have no power to bring down the government, and they would be totally reliant on the goodwill of Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael to implement any Green policies – in other words, just like being in opposition.

So are the big parties minded to implement Green policies? Have a listen to the interview!