Government is rarely such a stable thing

Politicians always yearn for a stable government even if the reality is that it rarely happens. Numbers alone does not guarantee stability. Look at Fianna Fáil in 1997 and in 2007 or even the last Coalition, which despite its numbers, was tottering by the time they limped to last February’s election.

This Government is the antithesis of stable. Only a few of the short-lived governments of the early 1980s are comparable. The mathematics are marginal and we all know that even the slightest slip or hiccup or crisis will plunge us all into the abyss.

So what’s my point? That stable governments fall? And fragile ones succeed?

Not quite. Politics is never stable; it couldn’t be. It depends on confidence. And that confidence is expressed in numbers – in other words, votes.

In the big elections, the people throw one lot out and put another lot in. In between elections, it’s the politicians themselves who perform the coups, and the acts of hari-kari or the putsches.

No other profession requires such constant tangible validation for those who work in it. You can get fired on a whim.

You all get fired periodically when the people get tired of you, tired your promises, tired of your lousy decisions, tired of your actions and your inactions.

It’s no wonder the world of politics is often portrayed as a house of cards, prone to collapse at any moment.

And that’s particularly true of this Government, the most potentially unstable one in the history of the State.

Let us remind ourselves of its architecture. There’s Fine Gael with 50 seats. The disparate group of Independents bring the grand total to 58. That’s just slightly over a third of the 158 seats in the Dáil.

The only practical way for the Government to survive is for the largest other bloc, Fianna Fáil, to abstain or support it. Clearly, it’s not going to do that on every occasion.

It has agreed to do it – via a three page document – on the stuff that’s really important (like the Budget and Apple) and that stuff that could lead to the fall of the Government.

What we are seeing is the beginning of ‘bloc’ politics in Ireland, where the various blocs in Leinster House form alliances for short-term strategic purposes.

We have seen Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael come together on Apple. We have seen Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin come together on a private members Bill on mortgages.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.