Slow-motion decoupling: as an election draws closer, faultlines in Government are becoming clearer

A plaque unveiled at the opening of the Patrickswell Community Centre in Limerick this year showed the importance of establishing political ownership, even among Coalition partners.
Initially, it marked the presence of Fine Gael minister Heather Humphreys and her party colleague Patrick O’Donovan, a Limerick County TD, but it was later altered to include the name of Niall Collins, a junior minister in the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil-Green Government and a constituency rival of O’Donovan’s.
“Limerick City and County Council made an error of omission and they rectified it,” Collins explained last week.
The importance of plaques is not lost on O’Donovan. The Irish Times understands he made unsuccessful efforts to get his name on a plaque marking the opening of a Gaelscoil in Limerick earlier this month.
With the coalition’s final budget due on October 1st and a general election to follow, getting the credit for political wins is assuming a new importance.
The emergence of faultlines within the Coalition, for so long something party leaders sought to minimise, is becoming unavoidable, even politically necessary, as the three parties seek to differentiate themselves from each other in the eyes of voters.
But it is a balancing act, with risks.
For the most part, the Government has hung together in a businesslike and low-drama fashion, despite inevitable flare-ups.
It didn’t look like this at the start in 2020: the two Civil War parties, plus the Greens, were thrown together against the backdrop of a pandemic that framed every act of Government.
Ministers resigned, Golfgate happened, but still, relationships at the top of Government began to gel. Power quickly centred in a weekly Monday evening meeting between then taoiseach Micheál Martin, Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar and Green Party boss Eamon Ryan, attended by their chiefs of staff. Here, they would thrash out tricky problems.
It was a solution which reflected Martin’s emphasis on consensus building and cautious incrementalism. As Covid lockdowns eased, the three-party Government settled into a rhythm.
This year, change has come rapidly. Ryan and Varadkar are gone, and the political imperative favouring unity has diminished as the Government enters its final stretch and a general election approaches in the months ahead, whenever it might be.
The most eye-catching change has been the arrival of Harris in the Taoiseach’s office in April. His political brand – new energy – has propelled a party in government for 13 years to being the most popular in the country and a surge in voter satisfaction with Harris himself, as shown by The Irish Times/Ipsos opinion poll published this week. In scale, the Harris bump is similar to that seen by Varadkar after he secured a Brexit deal in 2019 – a time when many felt he should have gone to the country; many feel Harris should do so now, as well.
The poll can’t be dismissed as a sugar high after his election, with the previous poll undertaken in May when he had been just a few weeks in office. It seems the more people know and see Harris, the more they like him – for now, at least.
Predictably, there is near-giddiness in the Harris camp over his popularity, as it relished a summer of the Taoiseach sweeping into agricultural shows with even Fianna Fáil TDs anxious to collar him on arrival. This culminated at the National Ploughing Championships in Co Laois last week, where the reaction to Harris delighted aides.
“We have pulled a trick that the devil would pull,” says one Fine Gael source. “We have made Simon Harris the change candidate despite him being in government for 13 years.”
On the basis of current numbers, that is hard to dispute. The polling shows he is getting a clear signal from the electorate; for Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman and Martin, who are treading water in the polls, it is not so clear.
It has always been the case that as an election draws closer, dividing lines between the Coalition parties would become clearer. As electioneering gathers pace, part of this has been the parties characterising each other as overly political.
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O’Gorman told The Sunday Times last weekend that his partners have prioritised politics over good policymaking, while Martin told the Fianna Fáil think-in this week that there is an “obligation to govern and not engage in some form of permanent campaign”. This was seen as a swipe at the omnipresent Harris which is said to have raised eyebrows in the Taoiseach’s office.
There was irritation among Fianna Fáil Cabinet members over the Taoiseach telling his parliamentary party that there would be clarity at budget time on what would happen to the €13 billion in back-tax the EU has ordered tech giant Apple to pay the State. This was seen as effectively publicly announcing a decision taken collectively and in conclave last Monday by the three Government leaders along with Minister for Finance Jack Chambers and Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe.
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The political style and popularity of Harris – and, more importantly, the momentum he has brought – is now a factor for election strategists.
The slow-motion and patchy decoupling of Coalition parties extends further.
Fianna Fáil TDs are being given a freer reign to indulge their preoccupations with the Green Party, targeting Eamon Ryan this week over a €40 million shortfall in small-scale roads spending, with Fianna Fáil Minister of State James Lawless leading efforts to target a Budget day payout to make up for it.
As they get into their stride, some Fianna Fáil backbenchers privately say they want Martin to rule out future Coalition with the Greens. For their part, Green TDs complain that the party is “a very convenient whipping boy”, that they are portrayed as anti-rural Ireland and the root cause of all inconvenient evils.
Green strategists believe O’Gorman can defend its patch: “Rod is well able to handle himself,” says one.
The party’s new deputy leader, Senator Róisín Garvey, has publicly said other parties steal credit for the party’s achievements, while Green-tinged budget stories have appeared this year with greater frequency than previously.
A spat over plans to stall the introduction of a land hoarding tax led to a backlash from the Greens. An update on the tax was sought by O’Gorman from Fianna Fáil’s Chambers at a recent Cabinet housing committee meeting, but the next they heard about the plan was a report saying Fianna Fáil wanted to delay it.
On housing, Green Party sources point to a divergence between themselves and Fianna Fáil, saying they favour more measures for renters, while Fianna Fáil chases home ownership.
O’Gorman has failed to back plans to extend the contentious Help to Buy scheme, while Fianna Fáil has made protecting and extending it a core goal in the budget. Some Green sources even privately express support for Sinn Féin’s affordable housing plan, which hinges on State ownership of land under privately owned or rented homes – something Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have dismissed.
As for Fianna Fáil, Martin was typically dismissive of last week’s poll numbers, promising to “outpoll the polls”. Some in Fine Gael believe the Corkman has been irked, leading him to obliquely call out Harris’ rhetoric on a State-provided model of childcare as “half baked” and pointing to what they see as an overhaul of his social media output to make it more Harris-like.
Sources in Martin’s party argue Harris is yet to be truly tested by a crisis over the long days of summer, but they warn: “the days are shortening”. FF TDs argue “Micheál has this Zen-like calm about him still”, promising he will campaign on providing “an anchor to the Government”.
Of Harris’ new energy, one Fianna Fáil minister remarks: “Energy doesn’t last in any quantum, whether it’s physics or politics.”
The party has been working on its manifesto, co-ordinated by Minister of State James Browne, and believes it has held back enough policy-wise to capture voters’ attention come the campaign proper, whereas Fine Gael may have little new to say, having used budget season as “their prequel”, one minister said.
Increased friction brings greater risk of shadowboxing developing into something more serious by accident.
“All three parties are going to have their elbows out; the worry is someone says something that goes a bit too far and causes a real issue,” says one Green TD.
A Cabinet source sums the present situation up: “Everyone is very aware of where we are in the electoral cycle”, arguing that it doesn’t benefit anyone for the Government to “collapse messily”.
But, at the same time, everyone will, the source says, “stake out their own political territory”.