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LAST UPDATE | 26 Jun 2020
THE VOTES FROM all three parties who balloted their members on the programme for government will be counted today.
The count results from the Green Party, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael are expected to be announced at around 6pm this evening.
All eyes will be on the Greens, the party that arguably had the hardest task this week, with party rules setting out that they need the approval of two-thirds of their membership.
It also remains to be seen whether members of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will give the green light to entering into a historic coalition together.
What does it all mean?
After weeks of negotiations, the three parliamentary parties agreed on a programme for government earlier this month.
For it to be accepted, the membership of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party all have to endorse it.
Over the last week, postal votes were issued to all members and returned to party head offices.
The ratification processes in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens are all different.
Fine Gael has an electoral college which is weighted towards the parliamentary party, which means they only have 700 votes to count.
The parliamentary party make up 50% of the vote, followed by constituency delegates (25%), councillors (15%) and the party’s executive council (10%).
Their count is expected to begin around lunchtime today, and due to the small number of votes, is expected to be relatively short.
The count will be streamed on Facebook, with the overall result due between 3pm and 4pm.
The Green Party, which has around 2,000 postal votes to count, will begin at around noon. The Greens final result is the one everyone will be watching.
It is expected the results will be announced between 6pm and 7pm. If there is a recount, it could be later.
Fianna Fáil has a one member, one vote system. Their votes will take a lot longer to count than Fine Gael or the Greens due to the party having around 14,500 votes to count.
Fianna Fáil’s count is also expected to be completed at around 6pm.
While it had been expected that all parties had agreed to co-ordinate the announcement of party votes today, it is expected the results of the three parties will be announced separately.
If the programme for government is passed, there is not much time before the Dáil sits to elect a new Taoiseach, and for a new Cabinet to be announced.
The Dáil cannot sit in Leinster House on Saturday, due to social distancing restrictions.
A full sitting of the Dáil is required to elect the Taoiseach so all 160 TDs must be in attendance.
Instead the Dáil will sit at 10.30am on Saturday in the Convention Centre in Dublin, so as to allow TDs to sit apart when they vote to elect a new Taoiseach.
The building has been fitted out so that the seating arrangements resemble the Dáil chamber as closely as is possible.
There are strict health and safety guidelines in operation in the centre due to Covid-19, with only a limited number of people allowed to enter the building during the day.
Once Micheál Martin (who will get the first chance of being Taoiseach before passing the job onto to Leo Varadkar in 2022) is elected, he will visit President Michael D Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin and seek permission to form a government.
He will then return to Government Buildings, where he will select his Cabinet ministers, before returning to the Convention Centre where the new Cabinet will be announced.
Speaking to reporters yesterday after what is expected to be the last Cabinet meeting of this government, Varadkar seemed confident that all three parties would vote in favour of entering into government:
“My prediction is the three parties will vote to go into coalition with each other. The yes vote will be larger than people expect in all three parties. There will be a new government.”
He also said the three leaders were still negotiating over the shake up of departments.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath said his party is confident it will receive support for the Programme for Government from its members.
McGrath said restoring and rebuilding the economy and would be a priority for the incoming government, adding that Fianna Fáil will be in a better position when in government than during a confidence-and-supply arrangement.
“[It's] an outstanding opportunity as a political party to secure our identity,” he said.
Fine Gael TD Colm Burke, meanwhile, said he thinks the vote will be carried by Fine Gael members.
He said members “are keen to keep our identity” during a period in coalition.
Burke said support for the Programme for Government grew as talks continued “and people believe what we now need is a stable government that will last for a period of time”.
Stay with TheJournal.ie for all the latest over the next two days. Keep up with the latest by following @thejournal_ie, and Political Correspondent @christinafinn8.
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Greece is a democracy. They have had loads of elections, and continue to elect politicians who don’t collect tax, and provide soft state jobs. Tick Tock.
Doesn’t Ireland provide soft state jobs too!!!!
This makes the EU sound like a Mafia organisation. Once you’re in you can’t get out again or we’ll get your family and destroy everything that’s important to you. Talk about holding a gun to someone’s head !
Any family would change into Mafia, once you splash your own cash all over the place, then borrow billions and demand that it’s being forgotten …
Hm bankers issuing warnings? Where were they when Greece was digging themselves into this pit?
The head of the Greek Bank was taken in to the ECB after the digging of the hole, then under pressure from Brussels he was made PM of Greece’s technocratic Govt.
No mention of rains of fire or the four horsemen of the Acropolis?
Very daunting and scary for the people of Greece. Some might say it’s scaremongering and propaganda but sadly it may be true? If they could get the terms of the EU-IMF brought down it may help.
Good luck everyone with your voting tomorrow. A scary day for us! Everyone should use their vote, whether it’s a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. Either way, whoever doesn’t vote can’t bitch and complain or have an opinion!
Unless of course you work 200km away from home. Then you could probably bitch a little about having it on a Thursday.
@ Rob Power
Agree with you. Typical of every Government to have it on a Thursday. I believe one of the reasons for that is, that people counting and sorting votes take most of Friday and Saturday to count and re count votes. By Saturday, supervisors should have an idea of how the votes are going.
This is true of a general election, but one would imagine that it being a referendum of a “Yes or No” shouldn’t take so long so a Referendum should take place on a Friday.
Well, it’s not typical of every government, as it was only started during this govt term (with Aras11).
I don’t think any consideration should be given to counting of votes when deciding when to set polling day. The overriding concern should always be how to allow the maximum number of people get to the booths on the day.
Home is where you live, not where you were born. It’s very easy to update the register of electors, I’ve done it several times. Voting has almost always been on a Thursday, it’s a hangover from British elections which are also on a Thursday. They should be at the weekend though so as to avoid school closures, added inconvenience for parents and those who for some reason choose to vote 200km away rather than filling out a form in their local council office to move their vote to a more convenient location.
Actually it seems to me that the day varies with the issue. Younger people/students are less likely to vote on a Thursday, so it seems to me that politicians choose the day depending on how they think it will impact on their chance of success.
There is merit in picking a particular day and just sticking with it.
So what % of the Greek population would have emigrate into the euro zone and send back part of their weekly wages?
Also tourism accounts for 35% of the Greek economy, how much would this increase by if they cut their prices in half?
Who knows, the only choice in front of Greece, is out now, hard 6 months and start to grow again next year or have another decade of decline, which will leave them alot worse than the figures given above.
By the ECB’s own targets, they will be at 120% debt to GDP in 2020. So they’ll need a bailout. They are dying economically in the Eurozone, and unless the payments to bail them out, grow in size and are permanent.
The lay citizen taking the blame for others mistakes again being made scapegoats.
Can you explain that point? Do you mean Greece are the lay citizens of Europe?
Did I say they were the lay citizens of Europe?! No.
Wow, touchy. I just asked you to clarify as I didn’t understand the point you were making in relation to above article.
No not touchy just able to interpret basic English.
Then interpret the stability treaty correctly and you will see that your pic “Bail out people not bank VOTE NO” is totally irrelevant to the issue being voted on :-)
You obviously don’t understand the treaty yourself. With that comment.
Hard to see how the EU would survive Greece exiting the euro. The currency would lose too much credibility. And if the euro goes, it would a failure from which Europe would probably not recover.
wow, Europe would probably never recover? Europe has survived two world wars…..
I’d much prefer the Iceland method than the Japanese one.
The bank forgot to mention that an exit would also trigger a banking collapse across Europe.
Greece is going nowhere. Bank statements, either your personal one on a monthly basis, or grand public statements like this should be taken with a huge dose of scepticism.
It is hardly surprising that a Greek bank would paint an apocolyptic picture of what would happen if Greece leaves the Euro. Self-preservation is a natural instinct.
There are two ways forward. Neither route is painless.
Greece (and Ireland) can choose the Icelandic route of a sharp painful correction with a return to growth in the short term.
Or Greece (and Ireland) can choose the Japanese route where over decades an anemic economy exists to support zombie banks. Ultimately, these banks will fail anyway.
The fiscal compact is designed to support the later route. Governments will be required to place the burden of any corrections on their own citizens, while protecting banks at all costs.
New York Times:
LONDON — Is Europe the new Japan?
Parallels abound between Europe’s current debt crisis and Japan’s so-called Lost Decade, when the Asian country’s economy imploded in the 1990s.
Both regions experienced real estate booms ahead of their financial crises, consumers took on large levels of debt and domestic banks built up unsustainable loan-to-deposit ratios as they sought to feed local demand for borrowing.
Recently, analysts at Barclays examined whether Europe’s debt crisis would affect local banks the same way that Japan’s economic downturn hurt that country’s financial institutions.
Their conclusions are not happy reading for European banks, which are trying to pare back lending, increase capital reserves and reduce risky trading activity in investment banking units.
Many of the Continent’s largest financial institutions have recently reported weak first-quarter earnings. Last week, Deutsche Bank of Germany announced a 34 percent drop in net profit, to $1.85 billion, while the Swiss banking giant UBS said on Wednesday that income for the first three months of the year fell 54 percent, to $911 million.
The only solution is a good old fashioned war! Best job creation scheme ever!!!
The people if Iceland would disagree I’m sure. The worst mob to take advice from are bankers and politicians, remember that tomorrow at the polls.
Vote No 1 the Bankers Party – just like Ireland so.
They may get their freedom by exiting.
Sometimes freedom has a price, but that price is worth paying.
who said the illumaniti is fiction
the bankers will get themselfs out of this euro mess at a cost to the tax payer.
Dan Brown sucks.
Reality strikes home here. Very serious situation on exiting Eurozone . Tax take in Greece low uncollected taxes 60 Billion could go a long way in alleviating poverty traps in welfare. They need our support in maintaining eu aid.
have your say