Remarkably stable coalition weathered its few storms
The Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat Coalition that took office five years ago has proved remarkably stable. It was established without a hitch after the 2002 election, despite Michael McDowell's denunciation of the dangers of a Fianna Fáil majority government during the election campaign.
It then went on to survive the departure of Charlie McCreevy to Brussels and the PD change of leader from Mary Harney to McDowell.
However, the second Fianna Fáil-PD Government cannot point to the same record of achievement that characterised the first Ahern government.
For instance, almost all of the tax reform agenda was delivered by the 1997-2002 administration, and the two parties have only returned to the issue very late in the day in the run-up to this election.
Big reform programmes in areas like health and justice were undertaken too late in the lifetime of the second Ahern government to have the required impact, but the big infrastructural programmes like Luas, the Dublin port tunnel and the expansion of the motorway system begun during the first Fianna Fáil-PD Coalition did come on stream.
The Programme for Government was negotiated with no great fuss immediately after the 2002 election. The major commitments on the economy were to continue the budgetary and economic strategy that had delivered prosperity while keeping the public finances in a healthy condition. Specific commitments were given to remove all those on the minimum wage from the tax net, to ensure that 80 per cent of all earners paid tax only at the standard rate and to increase the State pension to €200 per week by 2007.
While the broad economic targets and many of the more specific promises were met, and often surpassed, in the following years, the failure to meet some commitments such as increasing the number of gardaí to 14,000 or the extension of medical card eligibility allowed the Opposition to point to broken promises.
One of the striking features of the second Ahern Government was the fact that there were so few Cabinet changes. Most of the Fianna Fáil ministers remained in their portfolios and McCreevy continued in finance. For the PDs, Harney stayed on in enterprise and employment while in the most important change of the new Government, newly re-elected McDowell took over at justice.
A decision by McCreevy, endorsed by Harney, that created huge controversy was the shock announcement of a programme of decentralisation for the public service. Half of all Government departments and a range of State agencies were to be dispatched out of Dublin. There was huge opposition to the decision from public servants and voters were not impressed by a plan that did not even dovetail with the Government's own spatial strategy.
One Government initiative that did prove popular was the smoking ban. Despite intense opposition from publicans, the then minister for health, Micheál Martin, pressed ahead with a ban on smoking in all public places including bars and restaurants. Once it became law, the ban proved highly effective, not because of rigid enforcement but because people obeyed it willingly.
A long overdue Cabinet reshuffle ensued after the 2004 local elections. Charlie McCreevy went to Brussels as Ireland's EU Commissioner and was replaced by Brian Cowen, who had been serving in foreign affairs for the previous five years. Mr Ahern also retired some senior ministers and promoted Mary Hanafin and Willie O'Dea to the Cabinet. Harney took on Micheál Martin's post and immediately set out to reform the creaking health system.
The departure of McCreevy not only removed a key figure from the Cabinet, it also took away someone who effectively straddled Fianna Fáil and the PDs and had provided the glue that kept the Coalition parties together. Cowen adopted a more traditional Fianna Fáil approach, with less emphasis on tax cuts and more on welfare payments, particularly pensions. The PD Ministers were too preoccupied fighting their own battles in health and justice to press hard for further tax reform.
In the negotiations on the Northern settlement McDowell fought a strong rearguard action to ensure that the ending of IRA criminality had to be part of any settlement. Despite huge resistance from Sinn Féin and the desire of the British government to ignore the issue, McDowell eventually won his point and it was ultimately to prove critical in persuading the DUP to accept powersharing, in spite of the Northern Bank robbery.
There was an upheaval in the PDs in the summer of last year when McDowell pressed Harney to honour a previous commitment to step down as leader. After initially resisting the pressure, Harney quit as party leader and tánaiste and was replaced by McDowell.
He was immediately catapulted into a Government crisis following a sensational disclosure in The Irish Times that, as minister for finance in 1993/94, Ahern accepted payments of between €50,000 and €100,000 from business people and that the matter was being investigated by the Mahon tribunal.
The political controversy that ensued lasted for more than two weeks and for a brief period it looked like McDowell might pull the PDs out of the Government. However, Mr Ahern gave a long television interview to RTÉ that appeared to go down well with the public. McDowell announced he had secured an agreement from Ahern that an ethics Bill would be drafted to cover the issue of gifts or loans from friends in the future, and on that basis he decided to stay in government.
The first opinion poll after the controversy, in The Irish Times, showed a dramatic rise in support for Fianna Fáil and while a majority of people thought Ahern had been wrong to take the money, his satisfaction rating went up. That settled nerves in both Government parties and they pressed ahead with their plans for the budget.
Cowen announced a 1 per cent cut in the top rate of income tax and promised another similar cut in 2007 if re-elected. McDowell had already announced his intention of making the reform of stamp duty an election issue and the whole issue of taxation was back on the agenda.
Overall, relations between Fianna Fáil and the PDs have proved remarkably good, despite the change of leaders by the PDs. The fact that both parties have made it clear they are willing to form a third government in a row is an indication of how smoothly the Coalition has worked.
