General Election and Government Formation Megathread (see post #1)

You can have a government of national unity during particular times e.g. wartime etc. The idea is that when you need a strong government and/or can't be having major debates about the war in parliament, the parties agree to put the country's greater good over party politics.

The difficulty is that, without effective opposition, such a government will be largely unopposed for the duration.

I don't see how Ireland is in dire straights, we are one of the highest gdp per capita countries in the world, are ranked high on the human development index, are reasonably well rated on anti-corruption indices, happiness reports etc. Generally, Ireland is in the upper half of European Countries in most metrics and the top 20 in the world based on population.

Ireland is not at war, and Brexit can be adequately handled by the current system. If Brexit was the no.1 issue then people would be deciding on whether Varadkar/Coveney should continue or whether they want a change but since Brexit is not really on people's minds at all, there is no emergency about that.

So basically the problem is that the perception is that the health service is badly run, and amazingly that has been the view through successive governments of all different types. None of the parties have any real distinguishing policy changes e.g. an employers insurance model ala the US, or universal free healthcare like the NHS. Instead, they all say that they will magically fix the current system, but no one has any clue how to do so.

I suspect that a lot of people take the view that something dramatic needs to be done with the HSE. But anything dramatic leads to inevitable disruption, and that will cost people's lives. Leaving aside the obvious humanitarian problems with such a policy, no politician wants to have to meet the grieving family of a voter who would have survived had they been given the appropriate care but the dramatic change to the HSE meant they did not.

So ultimately the Minister for Health, whoever they are, is forced by the system to keep going as they are with health, try to make minor changes and savings in a few small areas, and the opposition are forced, also by the system, to criticise the Minister for anything and everything that goes wrong, and to constantly complain that there isn't more money in health.

So the only way that a government of national unity would work is by the opposition parties agreeing not to crticise the government as they tear apart the HSE and rebuild it from the ground up, and to turn a blind eye to the people that die as a result. No one in their right mind would ever do that, and the people of Ireland certainly don't want that.