David QuinnThe Programme for Government provides plenty of challenges, writes David Quinn
The new Government is now in place, for however long that turns out to be. It is a very vulnerable Government, unlike the last one with its huge majority. This will make it even more prone to populism. In addition, it will not have the Troika looking over its shoulder this time.
That may seem like a good thing, but the Troika did curb the populist instincts of the last Government. Populism rules Irish politics and it was populism that helped to land us in our economic mess in the first place and necessitated the bail-out and the arrival of the Troika in Ireland.
The huge majority the last Government enjoyed meant it could implement key parts of the so-called ‘liberal agenda’.
There were two big ones. One was the passage a year ago of the same-sex marriage referendum and the utterly radical and far-reaching reform of family law and our vision of the family brought about by that, and by the Children and Family Relationships Act.
The second was the passage in 2013 of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, which despite the innocuous sounding name, was our first piece of abortion legislation.
The first of these two measures would likely have been implemented even if the last Government did not have such a big majority because every party in the Oireachtas supported same-sex marriage.
Small majority
Whether or not the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act would have been passed is another question. If that Government had had a small majority, it would have been much more vulnerable to losing TDs. Its majority could have been lost. It might have had to allow a free vote. In that event, many more Fine Gael TDs would have voted against it and so, obviously would many Fianna Fáil TDs, which they did in any case.
On the other hand, many Fine Gael TDs would have voted in favour of it and every Labour TD would have done so, except perhaps for those who felt it did not go far enough.
Would Sinn Féin and some of the other left-wing parties have voted for it, or might they too have ended up voting against it for the sake of opposition and on the grounds it did not go far enough?
Probably the Act would have been passed in any case but it would have been a closer-run thing.
The more impatient pro-abortion campaigners will obviously have been disappointed that the last Government did not move to repeal the pro-life amendment altogether. But how much time was there to do that? There were numerous referenda between 2011 and 2016, including the ‘children’s rights’ referendum, another part of the liberal wish-list, although the wording of that referendum was not at all as damaging as it might have been.
Ruairi Quinn will have been disappointed upon stepping down as Education Minister that he did not make more progress in overseeing the handing over of more denominational schools to the non-denominational and multi-denominational sectors. So will his successor, Jan O’Sullivan.
In fact, the failure to make more progress on that front ought to be a source of disappointment to Catholics as well because the lack of real school choice in many parts of the country means that Catholic schools are under huge pressure to be even less authentically Catholic than they already are in many cases.
As for the new Government, what is it likely to do in terms of the above issues? The new Education Minister is Richard Bruton. He will be less ideologically-minded than his two immediate predecessors but he will nonetheless be under plenty of pressure from left-wing ideologues in the Department of Education, in the teachers’ unions and in the media to implement their agenda in any event.
This agenda is multi-faceted but obviously includes the provision of more alternatives to denominational education. In fact, the Programme for Government contains a commitment to provide 400 non-denominational and multi-denominational schools by 2030. This is a commitment the Catholic Church should support whole-heartedly.
However, even if this commitment is met, there will still be big pressure on the denominational school to implement measures they will not like.
Irony lost
For example, the INTO wants primary schools to introduce gender-neutral uniforms and unisex toilets in order to accommodate transgender children.
Quite apart from the extremely questionable nature of transgender ideology, the irony seems to be completely lost on the INTO that in the name of ‘difference’ it wants school uniforms and school toilets to be the same and not take account of the differences between the sexes.
Richard Bruton will also have to consider what he wants to do about a comparative religion and ethics course currently in the pipeline for primary schools called ‘Education about Religion and Belief and Ethics’.
Catholic educationalists are rightly wary of this because such a course could easily teach young children an implicit agnosticism about religion which completely contradicts the purpose of denominational education.
Then we have the inevitable abortion issue. Cabinet ministers such as Frances Fitzgerald, Leo Varadkar, Regina Doherty and Katherine Zappone will be pushing hard for an abortion referendum.
The Programme for Government promises a ‘citizen’s assembly’ to consider the issue. It is extremely likely to recommend either that the Eighth Amendment be replaced with something more ‘moderate’, or that it be deleted entirely.
But what kind of taste for a referendum will there be among rank-and-file Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs, not to mention many of the Independents?
An election could happen at almost any time and how many of the above-mentioned TDs will want to be running for office again soon after a rancorous referendum that will leave a bad taste in many mouths?
Whether or not there is to be an abortion referendum within the lifetime of this Government will therefore probably depend on how long it thinks it is going to last. No-one expects it to last more than three years and many are predicting its collapse long before that.