Anticipating problems and pitfalls for Government in the year ahead

Prediction is very difficult,’ goes the saying coined by a Nordic physicist, ‘especially about the future’.  

Sometimes such predictions do indeed come back to haunt you, especially if you stick your neck out, or are so arrogant not to recognise your own hubris. There was a coterie of economists who told us the economic boom would last indefinitely. And they were discredited along with a lot of our captains of banking and speculation.

As political journalists that’s part of our stock in trade. We analyse the past and the present, and punt about the future. More often than not we are wrong but besides the odd anorak out there on twitter, we are called out surprisingly little on it.

I remember journalists predicting confidently back in 2007 and early 2008 that Fianna Fail would romp home to a fourth term in 2012 – seriously.

And last year a well-known columnist went to the other extremes – predicting the demise of Fianna Fail. That’s not going to happen either but, hey, it sounded right at the time.

For the rest of us, we didn’t get all that much wrong but, then, we didn’t get everything right either. Most of us just accepted pat what we are being told about property and the economy without really noticing that the king was running kind of skimpy in the clothing department.

All that said, there are a number of events in 2013 that are worth marking your cards about. All of these things will happen – what’s not fully known is the impact or effect that they will have.

The first and most proximate is abortion. The Government has already decided that it will press ahead with legislation and guidelines that will include the threat of self-destruction as a substantial risk to the life of the mother. The debate on this issue will revolve around suicide.

I have no doubt that the legislation and the guidelines will pass through the Oireachtas. The whole of the Labour Party will support it. And as a three-line whip is being imposed on Fine Gael TDs and Senators, it will be a big decision for any Fine Gaeler to rebel and vote against the Government.

But I’ve no doubt that some will rebel. I sense though that the numbers will be small, or comparatively small. I’d be very surprised if more than half a dozen TDs and Senators jumped ship.

That’s a big number by any historical yardstick. But given the divisiveness of this issue – and the fact that it is an issue of huge moral conscience for some – such a rebellion would be liveable within the circumstances.

There were a number of Fine Gael TDs who were definitely swayed into supporting the legislation by the evidence given by medical experts at last week’s Dail hearings (which were much, much better than I had given them credit for). It will also be interesting to see how Lucinda Creighton will respond to the legislation when it’s published.  

The next big landmark in 2013 will be the end of March when the next tranche of the €30 billion promissory note to shore up Anglo Irish Bank falls due for renewal. That particular burden is a form of IOU for which the taxpayer was ladeled with a bill of €3 billion plus for ten straight years.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.