Civil-war politics

Ireland's political system still reflects the struggle for independence

ALL countries are shaped by their history, but in Ireland, south and north, history is ever-present and inescapable. Other things being equal, knowledge of the past is surely a plus. But other things are not always equal, and the trouble in the north caused by commemorations of battles fought several centuries ago invites the question whether a country can have too much history. Certainly, history has shaped Ireland's main political parties.

Most European countries have a centre-left (broadly socialist) party and a centre-right (broadly conservative or Christian Democrat) one, perhaps with some liberals in the middle, plus a green party and a few regional or fringe ones thrown in for a dash of colour. Ireland's parties do not conform to this model (nor do Northern Ireland's, see next article). The political differences between the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, can be hard to detect. As a telling piece of evidence, try asking a political insider in Dublin where the parties sit in the European Parliament: the odds are that he will not know. (Answer: Fine Gael is part of the centre-right European People's Party, and Fianna Fail sits, bizarrely, in the Europe of Nations group, with Italy's former fascists and the anti-EU League of Polish Families.)

The main point about the two parties is not what they stand for now, but that their forebears fought each other in the civil war of 1922-23. Fianna Fail was founded by De Valera, who opposed the treaty of independence, whereas Fine Gael emerged from the party that supported it. If Ireland has a natural party of government, it is Fianna Fail. It has been in government for 54 of Ireland's 82 years of existence and has long had the biggest share of the vote. It touched a moral low under Charles Haughey in 1987-92, when ministers were taking cash from property and construction interests. That period is now under minute scrutiny in a string of official tribunals.

The tribunals are likely to produce further embarrassing revelations, mostly about Fianna Fail politicians. And yet the party seems to have escaped the worst of the fallout. Indeed, it is in government again, under Bertie Ahern, who has been taoiseach since 1997. This time, shrewdly, he has formed a coalition with the Progressive Democrats, a free-market liberal party led by Mary Harney.

To an outside observer, Mr Ahern personifies the Irish politician. He is a cheerful, ruddy-cheeked man with the gift of the gab, a ready handshake for potential voters and a big smile at such exuberant events as the Galway races. So far his government has proved surprisingly robust, serving out a full term in 1997-2002 and on course to serve out another before the election due in 2007. Mr Ahern has become a close friend and ally of Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister: the two have devoted much time to trying for a peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland. Mr Ahern's government has also cut taxes and, except in 2001-02, held down public spending. Ms Harney is a doughty champion of tax cuts, who claims that reductions in corporate and capital-gains taxes have actually produced higher revenues.

Unloved

Unfortunately the Ahern government is now having to cope with an acute attack of mid-term blues. The fear is that Mr Ahern will try to make himself more popular by shifting leftwards and letting public spending rip, yet the taoiseach insists that he is not changing course. He points to his government's tough action in 2002 to curb public spending, which has been rewarded with renewed growth. He is not about to change tack and jeopardise his government's economic record (and maybe risk losing the Progressive Democrats from his coalition as well).

Instead, he talks of two big challenges ahead. The first is the need for an Ireland that has shed much of its cost advantage to shift further towards services and high-tech industry. The second may be even tougher: to reform public services. Thanks in part to its inheritance from Britain, the Irish civil service is efficient and, by most standards, free of corruption. But, as elsewhere, public services are insufficiently responsive to customers and often fail to deliver value for money.

The boom years of the Celtic Tiger allowed the country to pour money into education and health care. Mr Ahern points out that annual public spending on health, education and welfare combined has risen from €9 billion in 1997 to €26 billion ($32 billion) now. Public-service workers have also benefited from a “benchmarking” exercise that, under the guise of keeping public-sector pay competitive, has made it harder to control spending.

Mr McCreevy notes that health spending alone has tripled during his time as finance minister, from €3.5 billion to over €10 billion, with the numbers of front-line staff rising from 58,000 to 96,000. Yet as other countries are finding, what matters in health care is not necessarily spending more money, but getting a more efficient service. And here Ireland is behind the rest of Europe: doctors remain unaccountable, patients are not treated as consumers, choice is limited, and many hospitals are too small to be effective. Reform will be a challenge even for the tough Ms Harney to deliver, not least because Ireland's multi-member constituencies, combined with its peculiar system of proportional representation, give local issues (such as closing hospitals) undue political weight.

Mr Ahern has also made enemies in the civil service by proposing to move entire departments out of Dublin. This attempt at decentralisation has run into fierce opposition, and not just from senior officials who have no desire to go. Ed Walsh, who established the University of Limerick, has become a vocal critic, arguing that intelligent policymaking across departments becomes impossible if they are physically far apart. A better idea might have been to put the capital in another place, but that would be unpopular with the politicians. Mr Ahern insists that he will stick to his decentralisation plans, though he is willing to negotiate over details and timing.

What of the opposition parties? Fine Gael has changed leaders repeatedly since Garret FitzGerald was taoiseach in the 1980s. The current incumbent, Enda Kenny, has yet to make a big impression, but the party did well in June's European and local elections, when Fianna Fail got its lowest share of the vote since the 1930s. When Fine Gael was in office in 1994-97, under John Bruton, it was in a “rainbow” coalition with Dick Spring's Labour Party; the two parties now talk openly about roping the Greens into a future coalition.

Even so, no opposition party finds it easy to attack the Ahern government. Labour's leader, Pat Rabbitte, admits that Fianna Fail has reinvented itself as a modern progressive party since Mr Haughey's day, but he hopes that revelations from the tribunals may dent the party's support.

All parties are, however, worried by a new factor in Irish politics: the rise of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As the main pro-independence group, Sinn Fein set up Dail Eireann, the Irish parliament, in 1919. But after the civil war and the establishment of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, it was eclipsed, even though the IRA remained active. Now, however, Sinn Fein has grown to become the biggest nationalist party in the north, where it confronts Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists. Less noticed overseas, Sinn Fein has also garnered support south of the border, where it now commands getting on for 10% in opinion polls.

From which party is Sinn Fein drawing its support? Most of its followers are urban and relatively poor, so they have probably come partly from Labour and partly from Fianna Fail. The leaders of these two parties say that Sinn Fein will hit a natural ceiling of a bit less than 15%. That may seem small; yet as Michael McDowell, the (Progressive Democrat) justice minister, observes, Sinn Fein's platform is essentially a Marxist one. Besides, it still has an armed wing, in the shape of the IRA. Both Mr Ahern and Mr McDowell pointedly note that Sinn Fein is surprisingly well-organised and financed, and Mr McDowell openly questions the source of the party's money. Asked what single action might do most to reduce its income, he suggests that equalising diesel taxes on both sides of the border would have a salutary effect because it would cut smuggling.

It is possible that Sinn Fein might mature into a legitimate nationalist party: were it ever to be considered as a potential partner in a coalition government, it would have to. But even in its present guise, as a neo-Marxist party with guns, it will not disappear. Its new-found respectability has become part of the price that both parts of the island have had to pay for ten years of peace in Northern Ireland.

Ireland's political system still reflects the struggle for independence.

• Primary Source