"I HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY very clear on this," Enda Kenny said on October 11, two days before the Budget. "It is my intention to hold the election in the spring of 2016.”
His comments came after a week where the Taoiseach had, in four successive occasions, ruled out going to the polls in November - basically, as soon as the Budget was passed.
At the time there was some general scepticism about some political hacks (including myself) about the feasibility of a November poll.
There were too many other parts of the government's agenda still to finish, we thought. The Policing Authority - announced in the wake of Alan Shatter's departure from the Department of Justice - hadn't been finished. Likewise the reforms to the legal profession under the Legal Services Bill.
The bankruptcy period hadn't been sorted. Ireland's first historic legislation to curb carbon emissions wasn't passed. The Marriage Bill - giving effect to one of this government's crowning achievements, the referendum on same-sex marriage - had not been passed.
There was, simply, too much left to do. After this Friday, that argument will no longer hold water. And even Joan 'I'm Really Sure The Election Will Be Next Year Like We Planned' Burton now admits she's getting her ducks in a row.
This week the Dáil and the Seanad are scheduled to sit for 65 hours (the usual week is a combined 42 or so), meeting on extra days to get through a mammoth workload that will see 16 different bills sent to the Áras for Michael D's signature. Many of the bills mentioned above are in that list.
Once that's done, the Oireachtas will have passed 64 bills this year (plus one referendum), a significant increase on the 44 passed last year.
If there's nothing to do, don't do it
Quietly, with Christmas on the way, the decks are being cleared. After Christmas, there will be precious little for the Dáil to do.
That leads to the fundamental question: why bother at all? If reconvening the Dáil after Christmas simply means another few batches of Leaders' Questions for the opposition to throw a few grenades, then the government may be better served by not reconvening it at all. (Bear in mind: the Taoiseach doesn't have to tell the Dáil he's dissolving it. He just has to pop into the Áras whenever he likes, and ask the President to do it.)
The latest opinion poll is also good news too. The Behaviour & Attitudes poll for yesterday's Sunday Times showed Fine Gael on its highest support since September 2012, with 31% of the vote - up five points in just one month. Labour remains marooned on single digits, with 8%, but the welfare of Labour is a secondary concern for Enda Kenny.
STimes/B&A (Nov 30-Dec 9, ±3.3%) FG 31 (+5) Lab 8 (+1) FF 19 (-1) SF 17 (-4) Ind 11 (-1) IA 2 GP 4 (+3) AAAPBP 4 (-4) SD 1 Renua 1 WP 1 (+1)
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 12, 2015
There are only really two reasons to hold back. One is the Cregan inquiry into matters at IBRC, which is not strictly a time-sensitive issue. The legal problems blocking that inquiry are complex and nobody thinks there's a quick fix, and that it might be more helpful to let the lawyers meditate on it for longer. In fact, many people think it might make sense to park the inquiry altogether, hold an election, and then summon the lawyers to pick their brains.
The other reason to delay is the Banking Inquiry, which is now sat back in the doctor's waiting room, biting its nails and hoping the news is good. Over 80 witnesses and other "interested parties" are perusing its findings; it expects to receive their feedback by Christmas and to digest it before New Year's. If those witnesses are all happy with the report, it will be published a day before its deadline of January 28.
But if there's a single legal challenge to the inquiry's draft report, the inevitable delay in the courts will make it simply impossible to reach that deadline, and the inquiry becomes a lame duck with no purpose left to fulfill.
Waiting for a star to fall
An "early" (January) election would also have another perhaps undervalued benefit. The conventional logic behind sticking to February, when November was an option, was that it allowed the government to wait until the Budget's USC cuts and Lansdowne Road's pay increases had kicked in first. Simultaneously, the November logic was that tax cuts might be better in promise than in delivery.
A January election could be the best of both worlds: the government could promise tax cuts, and then seek votes from the public on the very day they arrive, or at least within days of their arrival. Many people are paid on the last Friday of the month (a mistake Fianna Fáil made in 2011). Fine Gael could capitalise by asking for votes on the very day its tax cut first materialises.
Of course, this could all be fanciful - a journalist simply making too much of a political news vacuum.
The Banking Inquiry, a stable font of gossip for the past weeks, is in legal lockdown - newsrooms have been told it would be a criminal offence to publish parts of any leaked report before the Inquiry grants its final approval. The political heat has been drawn from the IBRC inquiry, and the complexities of legal privilege don't really set the pulses racing.
But the reality is that this vacuum is entirely of the government's own making. The decks have been so effectively cleared that the only topic of conversation is the election itself.
I suspect that suits Enda Kenny just fine.
