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The danger is that votes to break the cycle of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will be used to keep the merry-go-round spinning. By Paul Murphy. This is a change election. A majority of people are now indicating support for parties other than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Is it any wonder? With crises in housing, health, childcare, education, additional needs and disability services, on top of completely inadequate action on climate change, it’s no surprise that people are fed up with parties that serve the rich while we struggle to get by. A brief look at the history of politics in the Irish state is enough to confirm that no substantial political change will come about from FG or FF in government. That is widely understood in working-class communities, where the overwhelming desire of people is to kick both of those parties out. Having been responsible, together with Labour and the Greens, for the bank bailout and brutal austerity which followed, people want them gone.  The Sinn Féin surge, as well as the Green wave taking place in a different part of the electorate, are reflections of that wish for change. The tragedy of Irish politics is that on many occasions in the past, that wish for change has been betrayed by Labour and the Greens. Votes to break the cycle of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were used to keep the merry-go-round spinning. There is a real danger of this being repeated in this election. RISE and People Before Profit have issued numerous calls on Sinn Féin to rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Unfortunately, Mary Lou McDonald’s answer was clear – she refused to do it and spoke about the necessity to be prepared to go into government. While a Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin government would not be a direct repeat of Labour or the Greens in government, the same fundamental process would be at play. Fianna Fáil representing the capitalist class in this country would block the change that Sinn Féin voters are hoping for. For example, there is no way that Fianna Fáil would agree to a rent freeze that is the minimum necessary to give renters a break. Such a freeze would hit the bottom line of the one in three Fianna Fáil TDs who are landlords, and more importantly the big landlords whose class interests they represent. Even at this late stage, if Mary Lou McDonald came out clearly and said she won’t be voting for Varadkar or Martin or any candidate from FF or FG for Taoiseach and that she wants to lead an alternative government, this dynamic in the election against FF and FG could be further strengthened. Sinn Féin doesn’t have to look to coalition with the right-wing parties to form a government. The forces outside Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could continue to grow in the final week of the campaign and have a potential majority in the Dail.  In those circumstances, what should the socialist left do? In the first place, we should vote against the formation of any government involving FF or FG. We should then use our votes in the Dail to allow an alternative government to come to power. Then we should vote consistently in the interests of working-class people. Outside the Dail, we should seek to help build the biggest possible people power movements to demand the radical change we need, including separation of church and state, the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, and the abolition of Direct Provision. Should the socialist left join such a government? That depends on what policies that government would implement. If it is to be a government that accepts the right of big polluters to maximise their profits, of corporate landlords to maximise their rent and employers to minimise the wages they pay, and only attempts a better redistribution of the crumbs, then that government will ultimately betray its promises, and we should not participate. Instead, the kind of left government with socialist policies that we would participate in is one that would challenge the rule of the 1% in this state and open the door to fundamental socialist change. Essential red lines would include; a commitment to take on the big landlords and developers by eliminating the housing list within three years and cutting rents including through nationalisation of the big corporate landlords and introducing a new model of public housing accessible to all; to commence the building of a single-tier properly resourced National Health Service by taking private hospitals into public ownership and incorporating them into the public health service; and to cut net carbon emissions by 10% a year, which would require public ownership of the big polluters. Regardless of the outcome of the elections, recent years have shown that change can be won when people take the streets in their tens of thousands to demand it. The water charges movement remains an important reference point for large sections of the population who experienced a sense of their own power. Repeal and 12 weeks on request were also not delivered from on high by a liberal government, but driven from below. The emerging global climate movement, including the school students strikes and Extinction Rebellion, can demonstrate the same pattern. It is no accident that the socialist left was to the fore in all of these movements. Our vision for socialist change is based on the desire of working people for a better, fairer and just world, and our ability to bring that about through collective mass action.  We used our platforms in the Dáil and the media to advocate for the strategy and tactics that were necessary to win – for example spreading the idea of mass non-payment, which was crucial to defeat the water charges. Outside the Dáil, our resources were used to build these movements and organise in communities. Inside the Dáil, Solidarity-People Before Profit has punched far above its weight. We have proposed and passed crucial legislation

In terms of the range, imagination and costedness of progressive health policies, Sinn Féin is in front, though Fianna Fáil’s is scrupulously budgeted for and the Social Democrats’ most orthodox. By Michael Smith All of Ireland’s political parties have signed up to Sláintecare which should be implemented by the end of 2028. That’s the key background to their manifestos which show variations and detail on what is now the template. Apart from Solidarity which has an appealingly short health manifesto including secularisation of hospitals and nationalisation of all private health and pharmaceutical enterprises, differences in policy are therefore largely about how the parties would prioritise elements of Sláintecare.   Though in fact Sláintecare does itself lay out a timetabling of priorities. This means there is an anomaly between many parties’ support for Sláintecare up to 2029 including its timetable, and budget; and their proposals of separate interim timetables and budgets during the next, five-year, term of government.  Presumably, if they frontload expenditure into the first five years when Sláintecare envisages a longer rollout, then there will be less expenditure in the second five years.  Otherwise, the parties are implicitly disassociating from what they have all agreed as the central planks in their health policies. Extra expenditure during the term of the next government will have to come from the €11bn ‘fiscal space’ over five years projected by the Department of Finance and accepted by most parties.  Beyond this, the parties have tacked on special pet projects.  But these are likely to be compromised by coalition or partnership negotiations. Past performance is something of a guide to future performance so it is worth looking at the history of parties, particularly Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, in drawing and implementing health policy in the State.  Implementation of health policy will be largely determined by Sláintecare with the parties’ longstanding ideologies a guide, especially on immediate funding and their indulgence of some pet projects though not necessarily the ones listed in manifestos.   On Health Policy Village cautions caveat emptor; there is every possibility there will be little change. This guide synopsises parties’ policies.  If transposition results in any mistakes Village would be pleased to correct them. Because there is such overlap the most instructive thing we can do is highlight original and different approaches, in bold. History of Health policy in Ireland In the second half of the 1940s, after it was instigated in the UK, a National Health Service was promoted by Fianna Fáil and even made it as far as a White Paper. But Ireland never got a single-tier health service, at first because of medical-profession lobbying supported by the Fine Gael Opposition, then because of-church opposition, and then because of medical-profession lobbying and revised Fianna Fáil ideology.  Donogh O’Malley, the hero of free secondary education, was against ‘socialised medicine’ when Minister for Health (1965-6): “those who could pay should pay”. The two-tier, medical-card, system of access to hospital care is a construct of Fianna Fáil governments, albeit never seriously challenged by any other party in government.  With no vision for the health system, Fianna Fáil threw money at healthcare in the late 1970s only to cut back savagely in the late 1980s. Between 1986 and 1993 over a third (5500) of beds were cut nationally.  The health budget quadrupled from under €4 bn in 1998 to over €15bn in 2008, largely playing catchup after Haughey-era cuts; and to €17.8bn in 2020.  2000 beds were cut in 2009 under Fianna Fáil/Greens/PDs but Fine Gael have put back  around 900 since 2011. In the last government HSE staffing increased by 8,868 to 119,126 by the end of last year. HSE management/administration employees increased by 2,042, an extra 328 consultants were appointed and there were 2,008 more nurses, according to Department of Health figures. Because of the shortage of hospital beds, the average hospital stay in Ireland at 6.2 days is much shorter than the OECD average of 8.2 days; and Ireland hospitalises far fewer patients, at 139 per 1,000 of the population annually, compared with an OECD average of 169. Fianna Fáil, under Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy (1997-2004), gave generous tax breaks to developers to build private nursing homes and hospitals: although it was government policy to have fewer, bigger, safer acute hospitals, another arm of government was giving away public money to build small, profitable, unregulated hospitals anywhere they decided, totally contradicting the policy.  In 2001 it gave and in 2008 it took away, un-means-tested medical cards for over-70-year-olds, recently reinstated by Fine Gael, the government then had to negotiate a very bad deal with GPs who (led by James Reilly who later finished up as a bad Minister for Health) squeezed the pips. As a result, GPs were paid three times the rate for looking after richer over-70s than those who already had medical cards. This skewed GP services so that doctors were paid more to provide care to those who needed it least.  The establishment of the HSE is the biggest public-sector reform in Irish history. Prepared by Mícheál Martin but executed by Mary Harney it was badly planned, leaderless for its first seven months, without structures, a clear plan for redeployment of staff who’d been organised on a county level, or a vision specifically to provide universal, quality care. There have been numerous attempts to reform but without any real transformation. The renegotiation of the consultants’ contract a decade ago was a lost and expensive opportunity at enormous expense to reform the Irish health system but it is only very recent and exorbitant proposals to pay €250,000 – twice what Britain’s NHS pays – to consultants to practise only publicly are something of a start.  A White Paper on Universal Health Insurance was published in 2014 with a report on the potential costs of the White Paper model published in November 2015. The debate was always too much about the cost of this rather than on how a focus on insurance might actually serve the presumed goal of universal healthcare. In the

Even in the climate emergency the Greens are all carrot and no stick.  By Michael Smith. I attended the Greens’ manifesto launch. I did it because, more than for any other party, their agenda – Green – matters. Being well-disposed I wanted to assess their fitness to deliver it. The media were there in force and about a hundred fairly presentable Green activists were on hand.  There would be internal training afterwards.  On the podium were three leaders of the party.  The first two spoke mostly about particular sectoral issues, reading from scripts.  Then Eamon Ryan gave a bit of a framework to it, some vision, an aspiration to ten areas where the Greens wanted more ambition, and an ambition to 15 seats which everyone seemed especially excited about.  He said something, again, about senior hurling.  There didn’t seem to be many hurlers in the crowd.  Nearly half of the candidates in Dublin went to rugby-playing Gonzaga which brings its own biases.  Then there were questions, led by Brian Dobson and the Irish Times‘ Green Party person, Harry Magee.  The questions were mostly what a non-Green would ask, with a fiscal bias.  Harry asked about insulation, and the budget for it. Eamon Ryan said if Ireland was to reach its emissions-reduction goals it will need to spend a total of €50 billion over 20 years to retrofit 750,000 houses to improve energy efficiency. I asked what they’d do about implementation of their agenda bearing in mind the problems with that the last time they were in Government.  Eamon Ryan – an almost pathologically benign optimist – said what he always does, that you can achieve a lot in government (they didn’t) and that half the reduction in carbon in the period after they entered government was due to their efforts – the other half being due to the fact the imploded economy meant fewer people needed to get to work.  He didn’t mention that any incursion on the soaring emission figures was highly temporary, and the energy improvements around that time were forced by the EU.   I asked what they would do about sprawl.  The answer was delegate more decisions to the community level.  That is the right answer to nearly all questions.  But not to this one.   The answer is ensure the already-agreed National Planning Framework is implemented not just referred to.  Indicatively, actually the Greens’ manifesto doesn’t even refer to it…or scandalously, outside of transport and climate, even refer to Planning. Nobody addressed my question on quality of life. It is elementary that environmentalists think quality of life should be measured, across a range of indicators, so it can be advanced instead of pursuit of a simple economic GDP metric. This is one of the biggest features of a green agenda. But there’s no reference to it in the manifesto. They didn’t advance it the last time they were in government, and clearly they won’t do it this time if they’re elected. The Green candidate in Dublin Central, Neasa Hourigan, often an impressive presence, mistook my question about introducing a constitutional referendum to reduce the power of property rights in order to promote a general pro-planning agenda for a question about housing.  They seemed to be improvising on central policy issues. This would not matter if it were not probable the Greens will shortly be in government and if they had not achieved so little last time out.  For it proves they have not learnt their lessons.  When asked about what the Greens had learnt from being in government the last time out, and the question wasn’t particularly directed at the environment, then-aspirant-MEP Ciaran Cuffe stated that it was not to go into government in the worst depression in generations.  That was not the right answer to give.  Remember, this is the party that justified going into government with dodgy Bertie Ahern on the basis that the climate imperative necessitated it, and yet which failed to pass a climate act in three and a half years, leaving only a toothless climate ‘bill’ as their legacy. The Greens needed, indeed still need, to be tougher and more strategic.  They need to plot out want they need to achieve in government, in particular policies;  and to monitor its success.   Just as you can monitor economic growth month to month they should be monitoring: quality of life, air quality, mortality rates and development patterns month to month; and adjusting policy to achieve clear strategic goals.  The Greens’ manifesto is fairly thin – by comparison with Sinn Féin’s magnificently unwieldly one for example – but imaginative and progressive.  It’s great to see a proposal for an 80% tax on windfall rezoning profits and the Green Party is serious about a site value tax. Implementing the Kenny Report on public compulsory acquisition would be exciting. Environmental journalist John Gibbons has applauded its plan to increase the amount of Irish land farmed organically to 20 per cent by 2030.  I would find it difficult to argue with almost any of it as far as it goes.  Though unfortunately it is not always entirely clear that it is a party of the Left, or that it favours radical redistribution.  Though they support the radical measure of a universal basic income, their section on ‘Equality’ illuminatingly doesn’t mention income or wealth equality.  It’s not even that detailed on the environment.  There’s nothing on architecture or design. Or on urbanism; or on curtailing sprawl and one-off housing. There’s a bit on density but nothing on high-rise. Nothing from the Greens on Planning. It just doesn’t figure in the manifesto. Ciarán Cuffe must have been asleep. The Greens aren’t going to stop one-off housing – as that would generate an unholy row.  And their approach to the suckler herd is likely to be as gentle as that of the Polish government to coal-mining.  It’s an exception where we have a competitive advantage after all. And the lobby is frightening.  Anyway, it calls for a 7 per cent per year fall in emissions to reach the EU CO2 reduction target of a minimum 50 per cent by 2030. The current government target

  The parties’ election manifestos are elusive about the structure of the united Ireland to which they aspire. By Anna Mulligan. The biggest geo-political concern for this country is the possibility that in this decade, or even in the lifetime of the next government, a majority of people in Northern Ireland could be in favour of reuniting with the Republic.  With the tide of Brexit-caused uncertainty receding, this general election campaign finally offers us a chance to think beyond the next budget – to discuss critically what reunification might mean.  Since the Brexit referendum, commentators in the Republic have been falling into the trap of engaging with the question of reunification enough to raise hackles, but not enough to inform anyone of anything.  From Fine Gael to Sinn Fein, many of the parties state that their eventual goal is a united Ireland, but none have a clear position on what a united Ireland would look like. If the Brexit referendum holds a lesson for us, it is not to call a vote on a massive, sweeping change without first developing an understanding of the specific issues involved. The very term “united Ireland” is part of the problem. The question isn’t whether we should have a “united Ireland”, but whether we should reunite Ireland, and how, and what kind of country that new state would be.  The Good Friday Agreement is open-ended: it says that a border poll showing a majority in the Republic and the North for reunification would be a binding obligation on both governments to introduce legislation “to give effect to that wish”. The ambiguity in this statement – the nature of the wish, and how effect could be given to it – is ours to make sense of.In the Republic of Ireland, we have a bicameral parliament and a principally ceremonial President. We amend our constitution frequently by referendums. In Northern Ireland, there is a unicameral devolved legislature responsible for “transferred matters” (issues not reserved to Westminster) and for selecting the Northern Ireland Executive. This selection process is structured so that the Executive will include members from both unionist and nationalist communities, and the Good Friday Agreement requires that some controversial motions in the Assembly be passed by “cross-community vote”.  A reunification process would involve reconciling these structures. In doing so, three issues are most urgent – devolution, power-sharing, and the constitution. Any kind of reunited Ireland would involve trade-offs between these three concerns.  Keeping these in mind, there are broadly three ways that Ireland could go about the process of reunification: absorption, devolution, and integration. All of these options are on a continuum:  any arrangement can be more or less federal, involve more or less power-sharing mechanisms, and require more or less constitutional change. As a result, differences of degree need as much consideration as those of kind. The German Option: AbsorptionI’m not going to hold up any one option as preferable, but I do want to dispense with one that merits no consideration: the German model, in which the Republic of Ireland “absorbs” Northern Ireland and changes almost nothing about itself, from its flag to its constitution to its legislature. This model abandons power-sharing, devolution, and the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, while it leaves Bunreacht na hÉireann almost untouched.  This model is the embodiment of unionist fears about reunification. There would be no protections for their interests as a minority, no safeguards to preserve the Good Friday Agreement’s delicate balance. The idea that a century of partition could be unravelled without compromise is unrealistic and inflammatory.  At times, it seems that this is what the great multitude of people who have been pushing for discussion on the issue mean when they say “united Ireland” – but if it ever does happen, they risk a shock. Now that the threat of a hard border in the near term has lifted, there’s no excuse for raising a delicate issue just to play pretend. Parties and voters in this election need to understand that reunification is not a policy towards Northern Ireland, but a policy of transformation for the Republic of Ireland and the North both. The Federal Option: DevolutionOne alternative is a federal or confederal option. This would effectively continue devolution with the Dáil replacing Westminster, allowing the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement to survive in a version of Stormont. This model would seek to acknowledge that distinct political cultures have emerged on this island over the course of partition.  The more radical option would be a “three parliament” solution, which was considered by the New Ireland Forum in 1984. This envisions separate parliaments and executives, North and South, along with an overarching government with relatively weak central authority. The “three parliaments” solution preserves power-sharing and devolution but would require serious constitutional change, and that a new Ireland bear the costs and complications of sustaining three separate bureaucracies.  It was for this reason that the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement rejected the “three-parliaments” option in its 2017 report. It proposed another federal option: the “two parliaments” solution. Stormont, it argued, has always existed as a devolved parliament with limited authority. Just as we have seen devolution all over Britain without any apparent need or demand for a devolved authority in England, so – the report argues – would there be little demand for a 26-county parliament in a united Ireland. This model would leave power-sharing intact at a regional level by retaining Stormont as is, while the Oireachtas would operate as Westminster does now.  Sinn Féin’s manifesto appears to nod to this model, advocating for Northern MPs to be accorded membership in the Dáil – although there is no mention of whether this would foreshadow a similar structure after a vote for reunification. Fine Gael’s manifesto also discusses a commitment to the Good Friday institutions and to devolution that could be compatible with a federal or confederal model, but again, the situation envisioned after a border poll is