LABOUR LEADER IVANA BACIK has said she believes Tánaiste Simon Harris taking on the Finance Ministry will be “destabilising” for this government next year.  

Speaking to The Journal in a wide-ranging interview, she said Paschal Donohoe stepping down as the finance minister has created a “destabilising dynamic” that she believes hasn’t been highlighted enough. 

While she said her view was not a reflection on what she thought of Harris’s capabilities, Bacik said: 

“Simon Harris having taken on the finance ministry, clearly, that’s a huge brief to take on. Along with being leader, it’s an unusual one. He’s leader. He’s Tanaiste. He’s also now Finance Minister. But just looking at the dynamic of the government, I think it’s destabilising.

“Why? Because until now, you’ve always had four key players – the two parties, their leaders, the Taoiseach and Tánaiste swapping, and then the two finance ministries [Finance and Public Expenditure] swapping. Now you’ve got both the Fine Gael roles rolled into one person, and I’m not sure just how stable that is for the government. So I have concerns about it, I have to say,” said the Labour leader. 

Last weekend, The Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks opinion poll asked people if they agreed with Harris’ appointment.

Only 15% said yes, while 70% said they were opposed to Harris’s self-appointment. The Tánaiste has said since that he will ensure that there is “ongoing careful management of the public finances” in his new role.

Too many different roles 

Bacik spoke about the importance of “corridor conversations” that she said presumably took place between Donohoe and Fianna Fáil’s Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers. She questions whether Harris, holding down so many different roles, would have the same opportunities. 

“I just feel in the new year we’re going to see perhaps that playing out. And I just can’t see how it will contribute to stability in this government,” she added.

Harris and the Taoiseach have commented many times that Labour did have the opportunity to enter government, but turned up the chance, something Minister of State Thomas Byrne pointed to when concerns about the finance ministry appointment were put to him this week.

He told The Journal that he is good friends with Bacik, as she was one of his lecturers in college, but added that had she taken up an opportunity to join the government at the time, “she may well have been one of those pillars herself”.

He said, in his view, she would have been a “very sensible pillar, highly learned person, and I would have had no difficulty with that myself”.

“They all had an opportunity to be part of a government,” said Byrne. 

It’s not just the Tánaiste and the jobs that he holds that has Labour concerned. The Taoiseach also comes in for criticism, with Bacik recalling how she recently dubbed Micheál Martin the “tetchy Taoiseach”.

She said that “wasn’t just a line” she uttered in the chamber, but it was something that people had remarked upon.

“People had been saying to me, ‘Look, he’s increasingly defensive, Micheál Martin, in response to my questions at Leaders Questions,” she said. 

Describing Martin as “prickly and tetchy”, Bacik said “it’s not a good look”.

She highlighted how Michael Lowry was brought back into the fold of government, which she said Martin allowed, and how the Tipperary TD was filmed giving the two fingers during one of the first sittings of this new government. 

“It really looked as if there was a sort of triumphalism creeping back in. We were seeing the re-emergence of the old Bertie days, the Galway tent, Fianna Fáil triumphant. And that’s again, I think, very uneasy for any of us who remember the collapse of the Celtic Tiger,” she said. 

Doing business with Sinn Féin

Ultimately, the Labour Party chose not to enter government, but their sights are set on the future, with Bacik hoping that it will made up of a left-leaning bloc. 

She said her party should get credit for floating the idea of a united left candidate for the presidency back in January.

While her party colleague and former Labour leader Alan Kelly said he would not be backing Catherine Connolly’s candidacy, despite the party giving her its support, Bacik said there are “no bad feelings” between herself and Kelly on the matter. 

“We move on and clearly my leadership on this, I think, played a really major role in contributing to Catherine’s success,” she added. 

While she said that same united front prior to the general election “didn’t work out”, it is her ambition for it to grow for the next general election.

“That’s really my ambition for the next general election is that we would see a left-led government emerging,” she said, name-checking, the Social Democrats and the Green Party.

Bacik said those are the parties that are “closely aligned” on vision and values. Notably, Sinn Féin was not mentioned in the same breath. Bacik has stated previously that she struggles to call Sinn Féin a left-wing party.

“We have huge issues, clearly with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but also with Sinn Féin on policy?” said the Dublin Bay South TD. 

When asked what are the key issues she has a problem with when it comes to doing business with Sinn Féin, she said migration, in particular, where she highlighted that there has been a “real hardening of their rhetoric”. 

“On taxation policy, very fundamentally, where they oppose a local property tax, and for us to be a party of the left and to oppose a wealth tax, to us, is simply illogical,” she said.

“And then I suppose on climate, where we’ve seen very clearly, again, a divergence of approach from Sinn Féin compared to ourselves and the Greens,” she said, highlighting Sinn Féin’s opposition to the Carbon Tax. 

Pointing to another issue, Bacik said her party put forward a motion on trans healthcare last week in the Dáil. “Sinn Fein certainly, in their speeches, were very equivocal about their position,” said Bacik.

However, while their diverging views on a number of issues, she said it is important to find common ground when it is there, such as with the passing of the Occupied Territories Bill.

“I want to see us, the Greens and the Social Democrats forming a three party common force to be able to drive policy in the next government. I think that’s absolutely essential,” she said. 

UK Labour Party policies on migration

While Bacik was critical of Sinn Féin’s position on migration, what does she make of her sister party in the UK and the new rules it is implementing? 

“We’re particularly concerned about the British Labour going a very different way than any Labour party should go. And also, of course, on Gaza and Israel, and approaches to that. So we would be entirely different on policy on that,” she said, stating that while she still has”good personal relationships” with some UK ministers, there are now some “very strong diversions” between the two parties. 

Ivana Bacik with Pedro Sanchez

While the British Labour Party has traditionally been the Irish Labour Party’s sister party, Bacik said in reality they have not been aligned as parties on policy “for a long time”. Bacik raised the example of the Iraq War and the position taken by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the time.

“The party we’d be closest to, frankly, is the Spanish Socialist Party,” she said.

“We’ve had very good relationships with the Spanish socialists,” said Bacik, who commended how Pedro Sanchez has been a “driving force” at EU level and how he has “stood up to Trump on so many issues”.

“I mean, Sanchez and the Spanish government, are taking a very different stance on migration to that taken in Denmark, or increasingly by Ireland,” said the Labour leader.