First Day in a very different school for Waterford TDs

Four Waterford TDs sat down today in the 31st Dail with the broken mold of Irish politics swept away, and binned.  The mold was only broken by a bursting economy and Eamonn Gilmore said there'd be no honeymoon. He's right: if Barack Obama didn't get one, one can't hold out much hope for Enda Kenny and the Labour leader.  The scale of the Fine Gael/Labour victory was only achieved with the help of the worst crisis the state has ever faced. Fixing it with few new options beyond what Fianna Fail had at their disposal will be an epic of success or failure, hopefully the former. The new government is free of culpability in the bubble and has I think the good will of the population, though inevitably on a temporary lease.   It needs to give us good news and soon; nothing major, a small act of kindness or  a small measure of revenge will suffice.

But what of our four new TDs here in Waterford? As ever we reflected the national trend: big win for Fine Gael, good result for Labour, a Left independent and a drubbing for Fianna Fail. Of the four, only John Halligan will sit on the opposition benches where there's plenty of room for reputations to be made, or lost.  However radical a change this election was, the government is one we've had before, albeit never this big.  It is the opposition benches that look so strange to us and regardless of what the numbers dictate, the title leader of the opposition will be competed for between Michael Martin, Gerry Adams and Joe Higgins and such is the damage to the Fianna Fail brand that Michael Martin can't be assured of victory in that battle. In fact, it might be none of them.  Out of the amorphus independent benches could emerge a clearer voice of the country's aspirations and frustrations than party machines can provide.  Certainly there are figures of fun in waiting amoungst some of the fifteen independents, in Waterford most believe we've elected one of the better ones. Instead of potholes and bridges, the new independents have an oppurtunity, whether it's Shane Ross on the Right or John Halligan on the Left, to speak for a nation.

Our other three TDs will be occupying the benches of the biggest government majority in history. Most of the 110 TDs supporting this government will do so from the backbenches as all three of ours do, for now. The backbenches can be a thankless place for a government TD and we have two in Paudie Coffey and Ciara Conway who go straight into the job on their first day.  However the size of the majority and the array of talent on the backbenches means there may well be a greater turnaround in cabinet positions and junior ministeries than we've been used to in Ireland, throw in a now permanent crisis where anything can happen at any given time and oppurtunity may knock for our Freshman TDs this term.  In the meantime, the high profile accorded to Ciara Conway by Labour since her election, including seconding Enda Kenny's nomination today, is an encouraging sign from a Waterford perspective.  And then there's the one sitting TD John Deasy.  The inevitable and tedious (not least one would imagine to the deputy himself) question of whether John Deasy would find a place in cabinet under Enda Kenny got its inevitable answer today.  If he wasn't on the All-Fine Gael frontbench in opposition, he was hardly going to make the shared table with Labour. But he's made a curmudgeonly name for himself in his nine years in the Dail.  There is something of the outsider - and the straight talker - which I think invites comparison with the new independents on the opposition benches.  If Ireland is to have a "new politics" there could well be a place in government office, and there's the small matter of topping the poll; we'll see.

It must be a great time to be each of those four Waterford TDs, things certainly felt different today.