Drama turns up on cue for FF's party

Shortly after Bertie Ahern's address to mark the 75th anniversary of Fianna Fail, the backdrop to the Mansion House stage collapsed.

With his usual luck, the Taoiseach had already departed the scene. The backdrop was a mostly cardboard collage of old campaign posters, anyway, and not a threat to life.

Was this was an omen? Probably not. The organisation has been threatened with collapse on several occasions in the past 75 years, but its base has rarely looked firmer than it does now.

No, the more likely explanation was that, as befits a party founded in a theatre, you just can't put Fianna Fail near a stage without expecting drama.

Michael Noonan hinted as much when he wished his rivals well on their anniversary, and admitted politics "wouldn't be half as entertaining if anything happened" to them.

The Opposition was less generous with Dail business, however. And as Mr Ahern's party set out in a hurry for the lunchtime march to Dawson Street, it looked like a cross between the Grand National and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

The Taoiseach took the field across Kildare Street with no fallers, but as usual when there are cameras around the competition to be close to Bertie was intense.

Donie Cassidy led by a neck early on while, in one of a number of significant moves in Molesworth Street, the former junior minister, Ned O'Keeffe, broke from the back of the field and sprinted up the footpath, before cutting back in.

In the Mansion House, amid the historic portraits in the Oak Room, the Taoiseach led party members on a tour of Fianna Fail's own picture gallery.

The works of de Valera, Lemass, Lynch, Haughey and Reynolds were admired; the landscape of the past decade's economic success lingered over. But Fianna Fail couldn't linger long yesterday, a day when they were legends in their own lunchtime.

At the end of a brisk speech Mr Ahern paused only to remember "those who are no longer with us". For a nervous moment, party members thought he meant Des O'Malley. But he went on to specify "those who've gone to their eternal reward", whereas Mr O'Malley has so far only qualified for a four-part television series, so everyone relaxed again.

Mr Ahern expressed the hope that he would live to see the 100th anniversary. Then, with the sort of timing that should help him achieve this, he got off the stage.