Deeply wounded Fianna Fáil struggles to field a team untainted by recent disasters

AT THE end of January last year, Brian Cowen made one of his worst and – because of it – one of his last decisions as taoiseach. He asked half his Fianna Fáil ministers to resign to pursue a madcap idea of letting the younger generation in.

There was one slight snag. He hadn’t fully consulted his government partners, the Greens, who refused to agree to it. Cowen, humiliatingly, was forced to climb down. But because so many of his own ministers had resigned – and he was powerless to appoint new ministers – he had to reassign their portfolios to the handful who remained. It was abject.

It was left to Michael Noonan to find the apposite phrase as the straggle of ministers filed into the front bench. The government, he said, was running on to the pitch with only half a team.

The remark proved prescient. When new Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin surveyed the post-electoral landscape, he realised that the reduced circumstances of the party were such that it would be able to field only half a team into the foreseeable future.

The calamitous seat loss was compounded by two other major impediments – its failure to get a single female TD elected; as well as the fact that a fair proportion of the 20 elected TDs, and later Senators, were old-guard or traditionalist politicians who weren’t exactly going to move might and main to renew the party.

In the face of voter anger, Fianna Fáil’s vote came solely from core diehard loyalists. And so any assessment of Fianna Fáil’s performance in Opposition during 2011 has to take all this into account.

At the risk of tautology, it entered the new Dáil a badly depleted and wounded party with no credibility, no women among its TDs, and a question over whether its leader represented the future of the party or a reminder of its failed past.

Stellar Dáil performances were clearly not on the cards. The party had to rebuild and modernise. It had to move into a space a world away from the Fianna Fáil that was a cheerleader for greed and narcissism over a lost decade. The party also needed to repent. The question was (and still is) for how long? With its half a team, Fianna Fáil has managed a scoreless draw in 2011, which is an achievement in itself.

One of Martin’s first post-election decisions was to effect a cull of the Seanad old guard to allow younger and female politicians emerge. There was a mini-mutiny. In the event, the party did better than anticipated in the election, winning 14 seats. But only half of the 10 backed by Martin made it. A small number of the “lifers” in the Seanad later made life difficult for the leader over the party’s strategy for the presidential election. There was a further tragic blow with the death of its sole Dublin TD, Brian Lenihan, in June.

The presidential election was a bit of a fiasco. There was humming and hawing, which eventually led to the party’s only biddable candidate Brian Crowley withdrawing. The public courting of Gay Byrne seemed like a bright idea for 48 hours and then backfired. Its eventual decision not to run a candidate looked messy and vacillating. In the event – given the campaign of attrition that followed – perhaps the decision was the correct one. But then Seán Gallagher’s associations with Fianna Fáil sent out mixed messages and highlighted how divided views on the party remained.

As Enda Kenny did in 2003, Martin devoted much energy during his first year as leader to reorganisation and renewal. He conducted a listening tour, visiting 40 of the 43 constituencies. He delivered one or two well-crafted speeches and talked about “new politics” and a new kind of opposition, but never fully defined it. The big test for that will come in the ardfheis in early March where Martin will push for a one-member, one-vote system for selecting candidates. Changes to the Corú, the party’s founding principles, are also in prospect for a party that badly needs to reinvent itself.

The party found itself in a strange situation in the Dáil. It is the main Opposition party, but only by the skin of its teeth. Until recently, its Dáil performances were muted because all criticisms could be easily deflected by the Government back in its face. Most of its newer and fresher TDs have not fully found their feet, and its brightest Seanad talents have discovered how little impact is achieved from the second chamber.

The party has been frequently outshone by Sinn Féin’s newer crop of TDs and by high-profile Independents. It has certainly not been dominant.

What Fianna Fáil has done well is produce decent alternative legislation, including Bills on family homes, mortgage arrears and personal insolvency.

It has supported the Government on key policies it itself backed – otherwise it would be guilty of hypocrisy. That said, it has become more opportunistic in its attacks in recent months, but has yet to score a big hit on the Coalition. It could have done so with the Abbeylara referendum but changed its stance too late in the day.

The biggest fillip for the party was the strong showing of David McGuinness in the Dublin West byelection. It also showed that the raw anger towards the party has receded quite a bit.

Is Martin the right leader? He does not seem to draw the same hostility as others of the ancien régime but his association with it is a problem for him. How he reacts to the Mahon tribunal will be crucial – he will need to show that he has cut all ties with the past. His tone in Dáil debates has periodically come across as shrill and bickering. Many believe his past will taint him too much, that it will make him incapable of leading the party back into government.

The party remains fragile and is at the beginning of a recovery period. A better judgment on how well that’s going and Martin’s wherewithal as leader can be made later this year.

Whom to watch: New faces

GIVEN THE pasting they got in the general election, it was no surprise that for the first few months of the new Dáil, Fianna Fáil deputies were as constrained as birds of prey with their wings clipped.
But since the summer, one formidable figure has emerged from within the party ranks who may come to personify a new disposition for Fianna Fáil for the future – less declamatory, more measured, more cautious.

He is Michael McGrath, who has succeeded the late Brian Lenihan as finance spokesman.

The Cork South Central TD is soft-spoken and understated but he has already impressed with a battery of legislative proposals surrounding personal debt and insolvency, as well as increasingly confident responses to the policies and utterances of the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, no slouch himself.

McGrath, an accountant, has clearly mastered the brief.

His high point was his budget speech where his attack on disability cuts catalysed a U-turn.

Other young and new TDs have taken time to adjust to being thrust into frontline roles.

Dara Calleary, Niall Collins, Timmy Dooley, Seán Fleming and Billy Kelleher have also built up strong profiles, as have Daragh O'Brien, Marc MacSharry and Averil Power in the Seanad.

Fianna Fáil's least prominent performers are those who have not involved themselves in the renewal drive.

In marked contrast to their younger colleagues, little has been heard at national level from Michael Kitt, John Browne, Labhrás Ó Murchú, Jim Walsh or Terry Leyden.

Tomorrow:Paul Cullen on Sinn Féin in Opposition