World of Politics with Harry McGee

I heard several TDs, mainly from the Opposition side, complain that this has been the ‘do nothing’ Dáil — and it is true that, when the summer break was reached, there was a dearth of legislation to show for the first half of the year.

Only nine new Bills (from the Government side) made it into the Dáil between January and July and only three new Bills were actually enacted before business concluded for the summer last week.

There were extenuating circumstances behind that.

There was the huge row over speaking rights for the Lowry group which delayed the start of ‘normal’ proceedings in the new Dáil.

It took an age for the new committees to be established. That could be partly attributed to the row, but the Government did not seem in a particular hurry to get it all up and running. That’s hardly a good sign of an administration that wants to lay down a signal of intent in the early period of its term.

The purgatorial stretch that it took to form the committees left the Oireachtas in a bit of limbo, certainly until Easter.

Committees play an important part in scrutinising legislation and budgets, as well as highlighting topical issues that are of concern to the public.

Looking through the Dáil schedules for April, and even into May, I was struck by the amount of time that was given over to statements — essentially debates on national and international issues.

Some of these are, of course, important, but at least some of them looked suspiciously like time-fillers.

Back in 2002, when Fianna Fáil looked like it was heading to a majority by itself, the Progressive Democrats ran a highly effective negative campaign in the final week of the general election campaign. The slogan of its posters was: “Single Party Government, No Thanks!”.

Labour did much the same in 2011 when it looked like Fine Gael, under Enda Kenny, was going in the same direction of governing by itself. It produced a parody of a ‘Tesco’ ad, which played on its slogan of ‘Every Little Helps’. The Labour advert had a slogan that said ‘Every Little Hurts’ and had a pictogram that showed about a dozen things that would cost more under Fine Gael.

For both the PDs, in 2002, and Labour, nine years later, the tactic worked. Both ensured that the bigger party did not go into government by itself.

The message to the voter was if the big party is allowed unfettered power, it won’t be really held accountable.

Pictured: Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill…has hit the ground running.