ANALYSIS:Each of the five main parties in Ireland has a large backroom team in place, writes HARRY McGEE
AT ITS party headquarters in Fitzwilliam Hall, Fine Gael can count on 80 people, between staff and volunteers, to oversee election strategy and organisation.
The major figure behind the party’s strategy is director of elections Phil Hogan, the TD for Carlow-Kilkenny. The other key figures are long-standing party strategist Frank Flannery and Ciarán Conlon, the former press officer, who is now director of election planning and strategy.
Mark Mortell, a former PR and marketing executive, advises party leader Enda Kenny but has what a colleague calls a “floating role” in deciding strategy.
Permanent senior staff, including general secretary Tom Curran and Mark Kennelly (Kenny’s ‘tour manager), are also on the committee, as is Dublin director Terry Murphy,l head of publicity Fearghal Purcell and chair of the national executive Brian Murphy.
According to a number of those involved in the campaign, it is Hogan who calls the shots. The party holds three meetings each day, the first at 9am. The previous day is reviewed, feedback from the media and canvassing is discussed and the plan for the next few days is sketched out.
Fine Gael has been building up to the campaign for two years. It held a dry run of a full election campaign in November 2009, at the time when the Greens wobbled over Nama. The party was determined fiscal and banking issues would not dominate the campaign.
“In 2007,” said a strategist, “Fine Gael had a ‘Contract for a Better Ireland’ and we used colour-coded posters. They were the only things that people remembered.” From that came the five-point plan, with each point getting its own colour.
The party has clung to the plan like a limpet. Every conference, every media appearance, every canvas, has been focused on it – to the point of parody when it came to Enda Kenny.
“The upshot is that the five-point plan has wholly dominated the agenda during the campaign. It is one thing that has stuck. It is a game-changer,” said the strategist.
Labour has not had the same consistency. “The ‘Gilmore for taoiseach’ strategy was conceived when the party was high in the opinion polls. Circumstances changed and that should have changed. It didn’t and I think we suffered,” says one source.
Director of elections for Labour is Ruairí Quinn, who is very astute and experienced, but it is head of the leader’s office Mark Garrett and national organiser David Leach who have been the driving forces. Colleagues praise them for a “professional, slick and well-run campaign”. The other key staffers are press officer Tony Heffernan, national organiser Ita McAuliffe, and the economist Colm O’Riordan, a brother of Dáil candidate Aodhán Ó Riordáin.
Garrett (39), from Ballina in Co Mayo, worked for the Competition Authority and McKinsey’s in New York before taking up his role with the party in 2007. Leach, from Cork, has focused on constituencies.
A party source said the election caught the party on the hop, and that accounts for its sudden changes in tax policy and on the budget deficit early in the campaign.
“Gilmore’s success was when he was benchmarked against Brian Cowen. Once Cowen was gone you had a Fianna Fáil leader scrapping for his life, that changed it. We have been flexible and have had to work in the past week to get back into the fray. The adverts last week changed things for us,” said the strategist.
Fianna Fáil strategists say this election has been a nightmare. “The brand is hopeless. Our strategy was simple, to shore up numbers, constituency by constituency, and concentrating on the individual candidates. The only thing we had going for us was Micheál Martin.”
Former minister Tony Killeen is the director of elections but he has concentrated a lot of his effort on individual constituencies. Nationally, it has been PJ Mara, as chair of the election committee, who has called the shots. Mara chairs two meetings daily, one at 8am and the other at 6pm.
Another experienced Fianna Fáil electoral strategist, Peter MacDonagh, has returned from Prague, where he lives, to advise on the policy side. He is also close to Micheál Martin, having worked as his adviser in education over a decade ago.
Another former Martin adviser, Deirdre Gillane, is also a key figure and is seen as a clear thinker and a good tactician. Former government and departmental advisers centrally involved include Brian Lenihan’s adviser Cathy Herbert; the Taoiseach’s scriptwriter Brian Murphy as well as Pádraig Slyne and Sean Tadhg Ó Garbhaigh.
Of the staffers, the main figure is general secretary Seán Dorgan, who organised the structures and plan for the general election and head of publicity Pat McParland.
They key figure in Sinn Féin’s campaign is director of elections Brian Tumilty. A low-profile figure from Newry, he has taken charge of all election campaigns north and south for the past five years. The campaign director is the Limerick-based candidate Maurice Quinlivan. Its election campaign committee includes Gerry Adams, Pearse Doherty, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, its director of political operations in the south Caoilfhionn Ní Dhonnabhain, and its head of publicity, Seán Ó Brádaigh.
The Greens also have a small team. Its programme manager in government, Donall Geoghegan, is its director and other key backroom figures are former press advisers for the party in government: John Downing, Liam Reid and Bríd McGrath.