The Gist: The Group Think Government

Wednesday's Dáil chaos reveals the limits of Executive power. This is the Gist.

The Gist: The Group Think Government
Photo by Jan Huber / Unsplash

Yesterday's disruption of the election of a Taoiseach by the Dáil may set the tone for this Government's years in office (however many they may be). Behind the spectacle was something deeper. It has been a demonstration of the limits of the powers of office and a reminder that the Dáil functions and the Executive exercises power with the consent of the Opposition.

That fact is why the 1921-1927 Free State parliament needed the Labour Party to sit opposite while the main opposition in the country was self-exiled from the Dáil. The Govt is only legitimate with an opposition. The Labour Party played that role- bedding down Ireland’s Parliamentary system and culture.

Ironically, FG spent something like eight decades not learning that lesson after spending most of that time as the main Opposition party. Having tasted Executive power as the Civil War's winners, they sullenly waited to reclaim what they saw as their rightful place inGovt in sulky impotence. Since having power fall into their lap, the party has resolutely set its face against any introspection on what might have caused its long exiles from Cabinet.

Meanwhile, over the same period, FF effectively lost their position as the party in or about to be in Govt only once- after the Cowen Govt’s collapse. Why would they ever consider the role of Opposition as anything more than a tiresome waiting room they had to briefly endure before being called back into office?

This Govt was negotiated without a thought for the potential reactions by the Opposition parties to the deal allowing backbench Govt TDs cosplay as Opposition.

Neither party has a culture that values parliamentary opposition- that sees it as having a role of its own, beyond The Losers.

Why stop at Independent TDs? Why not form every non-Ministerial backbench FF and FG TD into technical groups of 7 and give them each a slice of the Opposition’s speaking rights?

That’s what the Ceann Comhairle has said would be legal.

But everyone would recognise it wasn’t legitimate.

Take a look at this headline.

RTE Website screenshot: Incoming Govt caught off guard amid day of high emotion in Dáil chamber

The Govt was “Caught off Guard”.

The deal done to let the Independents run with the hares while pretending to also hunt with the hounds was clearly absurd.

But they all were surprised it didn’t fly.

This is the Groupthink problem again.

I wrote about groupthink in the Gist at the end of the National Maternity Hospital row.

“precisely because they have worked so long towards a common goal, people who are engaging in group-think find challenges to their shared beliefs intolerable.”
Irish Examiner Headline: Martin: Dáil chaos a 'subversion of the Irish Constitution'
“We forget it sometimes, but the Government doesn’t pass laws- the Oireachtas does that. And that’s because hearing the opinion of “the loyal opposition”, who are outside the group consensus of government, produces stronger, more robust legislation.”
“An institutionalised process that challenges groupthink is why democracies tend to last longer than autocracy.”

Our last Campaign Gist was focussed on the idea that the Opposition has an unusual level of coherence in its professed worldview. And we saw some of that play out yesterday in the line of leaders standing together to deny the validity of speaking time for Schrödinger's Independents.

But the opening of the Dáil has thrown the corollary into sharp relief. With no ideologically or politically diverse voices in Government the incoming administration is going to find itself wrongfooted repeatedly as it trips over the gap between what all the parties in Government will agree seems reasonable and how those ideas will fly when exposed to the public gaze.

Wednesday's outing provides a lesson in the value of hearing from voices from outside your own worldview before deciding your lead balloon is going to soar from the rooftops.

The Taoiseach will be elected today, I’m quite sure.

But the new Government - and their Ceann Cormhairle- have had a marker set down by the Dáil to remind them of the limits of executive power.