Going Going...

The second Haughey Government has been like the last months of the Nixon administration. It has stumbled from crisis to crisis, some of its own making, others occurring by the strokes of cruel luck. The Government was fated to fall sooner or later. It was sooner.

Within hours of the result of the February election becoming known, senior members of the Fianna Fail party were meeting in south Dublin suburban homes to plot the overthrow of their leader, who, by common consent, had been an enormous liability during the course of the campaign. But he was more than just a campaign liability. Some of the plotters, notably, Martin O'Donoghue, had reason to fear that if Haughey was returned to office as Taoiseach he would resume the reckless course in Government which he had pursued until he was removed from office in June 1981.

Haughey had taken an interminable time to reshuffle his frontbench after the 1981 defeat. Throughout the autumn of '81 he conducted a series of meetings with the likes of O'Donoghue and Bobby Molloy in an attempt to patch the party together and present a united face to the electorate. There were difficulties with both men. Molloy was reluctant to return in any circumstances while Haughey was leader. O'Donoghue wanted assurances on economic policy, which Haughey was reluctant to concede.

A major division had emerged between the two on economic policy during the debate on the Coalition's July budget. Haughey said it was entirely unnecessary (see accompanying article), while O'Donoghue conceded that corrective action of some kind was needed to deal with the emerging massive budget deficit. Eventually when O'Donoghue did accept the position as spokesperson on Finance it was very much on his terms. On the very day that the Coalition's January budget was presented, January 27 -last, the Fianna Fail front bench agreed with the O'Donoghue strategy that they should go along with whatever budget deficit target which the Coalition would propose. Haughey very reluctantly conceded on this and O'Donoghue reflected the line in his immediate comments on the Bruton budget.

But from the moment that the Bruton budget fell Haughey abandoned the agreement of that morning. He went on television and was dismissive of all talk about the seriousness of the crisis in the public finances and then at a disastrous press conference the following day he threw all caution to the winds and refused to accept any discipline on the phasing out of the current budget deficit.

Albert Reynolds sat beside him at that press conference in the Shelbourne Hotel and was appalled. He went searching for fellow frontbenchers in the Dail restaurant and bar after the press conference was over and the following morning there was a meeting of the Fianna Fail frontbenchers still in Dublin. There Haughey was told in fairly stark terms that he simply had to abide with the agreement reached prior to the Bruton budget and this he did reluctantly for the rest of the campaign.

The collapse of the O'Malley coup temporarily strengthened Haughey's position within the cabinet and he felt strong enough to leave George Colley out and relegate Des O'Malley and Martin O'Donoghue to relatively junior appointments. On his announcement of ministers in the Dail on March 9 Haughey did say he would' be reviewing the split of responsibilities between Industry and Energy on the one hand and Trade, Commerce and Tourism on the other. He never in fact did so and this was to be an irritant between him and O'Malley for the duration of their seven months in office together.

McSharry's initial performance in Finance was uncertain and inevitably so for he had no experience in the office. It was during this period that he voiced Haughey's theme tune "bloom and boom" but he quickly began to come to terms with his brief and under the influence of the senior officials in the Department of Finance.

The major change in the direction of the Government came during an all day Sunday meeting of the cabinet following the defeat in the Dublin West by-election. There, minister after minister, with the exception of Dessie O'Malley who was out of the country, spoke in terms of the need to get the public finances into shape, about the damaging effects on the Government deals such as the Gregory deal had been and the need to start formulating a coherent strategy before events overcame them. Haughey remained silent for most of that meeting and it was clear that he was unhappy with the tone of it.

By that time the power within the cabinet was beginning to tilt away from him again. McSharry in particular was exerting an increasing influence and there is reason to suspect that there was a major disagreement between them following the £45m PRSI concession immediately before the Dublin West by-election, only days after McSharry said on radio and TV that no such concession was possible. But the Sunday meeting established that there would be no further concessions, that the Government would remain firm on the Finance Bill and risk being defeated if necessary. It was also decided there and then to proceed with the formulation of a national plan, as had been promised during the election campaign.

The economic plan was overseen by a cabinet subcommittee comprising Haughey, McSharry, Reynolds, O'Malley, Burke, O'Donoghue and Lenihan. They outlined the basic strategy and then the civil service working committee, co-ordinated by the Department of the Taoiseach fleshed out the details.

At a two-day meeting at the end of July, following the East Galway by-election, they decided on the public expenditure cuts, including the freeze on public service pay. There was no opposition at all to this line, although again it was thought that Haughey wasn't keen but by then even Padraigh Flynn had become a "Thatcherite monaterist" as one cabinet member described it in imitation of Haughey's characterisation of the Coalition Government.

Following the summer recess the cabinet got down to preparing the public expenditure estimates for 1983 a task enforced on them by the consideration of the plan. They completed the public expenditure cutting exercise by the end of September by which time they had pared over £300m .. The estimates weren't published then because of the uncertainty about the opening budget deficit for 1983.

By this stage Haughey had undergone the second major volte face on economic policy in the space of two years. But in the process he had lost the confidence of even his closest colleagues - not in the sense that the likes of Flynn or McSharry would vote against him but in the sense of commanding authority in the cabinet.

This inevitably reflected itself in uncertainty in the party generally about his position and concern about he being a liability in the event of a surprise election. Again Albert Reynolds was a crucial person. He made little effort to disguise his own disillusionment with Haughey among backbenchers. At one stage when the Louth deputy, Tom Bellew went into his office he went over to close the door after Bellew and turned around to say: "how are we going to get rid of Charlie". Other ministers were expressing similar sentiments.

The disillusionment which Haughey caused among his own ranks by his performance during the February election has not been properly appreciated. Most disillusioned of all perhaps was Albert Reynolds, who already had gone cold on Haughey anyway. Reynolds was effectively demoted in the Haughey reshuffle of his frontbench of early January - his Posts and Telegraphs responsibilities were taken from him, leaving him with just Transport and Power. He was given the consolation prize of an organisational function but he himself and his colleagues agreed it was merely a sop.

Either just before the February election or immediately afterwards there evolved an agreement between a curious assortment of senior Fianna Fail members that opinion should be sounded out within the party on removing Haughey and if these soundings were positive a representative group should go to Kinsealy to tell Haughey that the game was up. Then, it was hoped, an agreed candidate would emerge but certainly there would be no canvassing for support for a particular replacement until the delegation had gone to Haughey.

Albert Reynolds was involved in this initial arrangement with Martin O'Donoghue, George Colley and Des O'Malley. We do not know what part Ray McSharry played in the initial stages of this process but he was certainly aware from an early stage about what was going on and he was aware because the plotters deliberately told him.

The plan came unstuck when Des O'Malley, apparently unaware of the precise conditions that had been attached to the soundings, started to canvass support for himself, or at least had support canvassed for him. This was correctly seen by Reynolds as a breach of the agreement, and McSharry's reaction was similar. But the extent of the contact between the O'Malley faction and the other two can be gauged from the fact that it was with O'Malley's explicit agreement that Martin

O'Donoghue telephoned Albert Reynolds from the English Language Institute offices on Stephen's Green, Dublin, late on the night of February 24, to say that O'Malley would be effectively challenging for the Fianna Fail leadership the following day.

It was in this troubled environment that George Colley, Jim Gibbons, Bobby Molloy and Charlie McCreevy planned their no confidence motion. They genuinely believed that 48 TDs would vote no confidence on a secret ballot. Ironically, the no confidence motion came at a time when a Government under Haughey was at last beginning to deal with the economic problems in a genuine and decisive manner. For this reason, there was an incongruity in both O'Malley and O'Donoghue

opting out. They did so, they maintained, because Haughey had demanded commitments of personal rather than institutional loyalty . But Haughey had made it clear to both men before they resigned that he entirely accepted their right not to commit themselves and that they were welcome to remain part of the Government. They resigned, some hours after George Colley had told the nation on television that they would do so.

Haughey genuinely believed that the adroit negotiation of a settlement by Gene FitzGerald of the public sector pay issue and the unveiling of the national plan would dispel the aura of fatality, which the no confidence motion and the 22 votes in its favour did to his leadership and Government. But by then rot had gone too far. The series of GUBU incidents (see separate story) from the Pat O'Connor affair, the Connolly affair, the rumours surrounding Sean Doherty, and finally the vote of no confidence in his leadership, all created an impression of disintegration.

It is a tribute to his determination that he is still able to present himself before the electorate with all the cockiness and assurance of a man with a credible record and a united party behind him. He would need to win decisively to restore his credibility within the party, but he probably needs credibility at least within his own party to win decisively. Not even the great Houdini of Irish politics may be able to escape that conundrum.