It’s hard to believe but it’s looking increasingly likely that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail may well stay in opposition to each other.
The most likely result from the recent election was a Fine Gael led government with Fianna Fail as partners. This in turn led to speculation of shared prime ministerial and deputy roles between Enda Kenny in Micheal Martin.
However, The Liberal can reveal that since St Patrick’s day, intensive negotiations between Fine Gael, a number of well known Independents and the two TD’s who make up the Green Party have been underway to form a new rainbow-type government with Kenny back as Taoiseach and allegedly Shane Ross as Tanaiste. Independents are promised high profile cabinet positions with the Green Party promised an Environmental role.
These developments led Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney to exclaim:
“We no longer need Fianna Fail as a government partner, we have made progress with a number of other individuals to form a government and this was not the case a week ago”.
How stable such a government will be remains to be seen.