3 2 April 2016
I
t’s a couple of years since I observed somewhere
or other that, if Enda Kenny chose to have an elec-
tion in the springtime of 2016, he would fight it not
against Micheál Martin and Gerry Adams but
against Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett.
So it has come to pass, although this meaning of the
outcome, like most of the others, has been overlooked
or fudged in the moronic cacophony of the pol corrs,
who have managed to achieve a quite astonishing feat
of anti-journalism by reducing an unprecedented
moment in Irish politics to a succession of quasi-routine
news days.
I had been hoping to stay out of it. Having deliber-
ately abstained from voting for the first time, and for
the most part reading and listening to nothing but the
dogs’ and street-criers’ accounts of the fallout through
my open window, I imagined the whole thing would be
over by now and we restored to our normal state of non-
government by showroom dummies. When I heard the
outline of the outcome – some five weeks’ since, at the
time of writing – I immediately perceived that the
arithmetic presented an insoluble conundrum for virtu-
ally every one of the 158 freshly-elected deputies, not
to mention those we laughably call leaders.
What has astonished me (somewhat) is that almost
nobody mentions the impossibility of the arithmetic.
Most of the commentary since February 27th appears
to have consisted in speculations, hints and musings
about likely alliances, ‘exclusive’ information about
possible seductions, lists of demands and breathless
whispers of phone calls and texts, all delivered well into
April as if it were still February.
But there is no possibility – other than a theoretical
one – of a workable government being formed out of
the present Dáil arithmetic. This is so obvious that we
should be deeply concerned by the fact that it has not
become conventional wisdom and given rise to the
rather urgent question: what now?
When the pol corrs have not been talking up the talks
about talks aimed at a minority administration of Fianna
Fáil or Fine Gael supported by the other, or a National
Government of the two, they have been murmuring
There is no possibility of
a workable government
being formed out of
the Dáil arithmetic. It is
extraordinary that this has
not become conventional
wisdom and given rise to
the rather urgent question:
what now?
The Chassis
underneath the Stasis
Irish democracy is dying because the old
who care no longer matter and the young
mostly couldn’t care less
POLITICS
No horses to trade: new election
by John Waters