World of Politics with Harry McGee

Government without the Greens

The general election was in November, but it took almost two months before the Coalition was formed. The known quantities from the start were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The question is who would join them.

Sinn Féin and the micro-party People Before Profit were ruled out. The Greens had all but been destroyed in the general election so they were out too. The Social Democrats engaged but it was quickly apparent that there would be no fix.

The Labour Party was divided – and from a purely selfish perspective, it was probably better for them that they stay’d out. The fate of smaller parties in government is they get routed at the next election. Labour had had its first good election in a decade since its 2016 meltdown and a term in government would have put it back to square one.

In the end the two big parties went with the path of least resistance which was a group of eight centrist independents led by Michael Lowry, as well as the Healy-Rae brothers.

The price of power did not seem particularly high; a number of junior ministries plus one super junior, which went to Seán Canney. It led to the biggest ministerial quota in the history of the State with 24 junior ministers, including four super juniors.

Lowry deal unites the Opposition

Fianna Fáil had the whip hand. While it had fared only marginally better in percentage terms than its poor general election in 2020, it got a huge seat bonus on the back of (mostly) Fine Gael transfers. But the new Coalition found its unassailable position crumble very quickly indeed.

Michael Lowry brokered a deal on behalf of the few Independents who were not members of Government that would allow them to be on the Opposition benches but would also allot them Government time to ask questions of the Taoiseach.

In other words to be Tadhgs an Dá Thaobh.

The speaking deal for Lowry proved to be a massive own-goal for the new Government and did what many people considered impossible – it united the left for once.

The massive row that occurred threw the Dáil into chaos in late January and prevented the election of Martin as Taoiseach. It continued for weeks and also had the effect of delaying the formation of Oireachtas committees. That, as we will see, had other downstream implications.

Pictured: When there were three…Presidential hopefuls Catherine Connolly, Heather Humphreys and Jim Gavin at the first televised debate of the 2025 Presidential Election campaign on Virgin Media’s The Tonight Show.