Party has had three changes of leader in last 20 years
FINE GAEL has changed leader three times in the last 20 years. In 1990, the humiliation of seeing its presidential candidate Austin Currie come third in the race for Áras an Uachtaráin, behind the Labour-backed Mary Robinson and Fianna Fáil’s Brian Lenihan, set off rumblings inside the party.
It was a scenario not unlike the present one, whereby the party has lost out to Labour in the latest opinion poll published in The Irish Times. The 1990 presidential election was arguably an even greater disaster for Fianna Fáil at the time but it had no immediate implications for the leadership of Charles J Haughey.
Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes was blamed for the party's poor showing and a motion of no confidence in him was tabled by Dublin South-Central TD Fergus O'Brien. Despite attempts to rally support, Dukes was advised by his own supporters, as reported in The Irish Times, "that his cause was hopeless and that he should resign both in the interest of the party and his own interest".
The motion was due to be taken at a meeting of the parliamentary party on November 14th, 1990, just seven days after Mrs Robinson won the presidential election but, in the face of inevitable censure, Dukes resigned “at a brief and sombre front bench meeting” the previous afternoon.
Dukes was succeeded without a contest by the party’s deputy leader, John Bruton, who went on to serve as taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 and stayed on as head of the opposition for another four years after that. Bruton’s downfall as leader also came at a time when Fianna Fáil was experiencing turmoil with the jailing of one of its former TDs, the late Liam Lawlor.
An opinion poll carried out for The Irish Times in the aftermath of Lawlor’s imprisonment showed a slump in the Fine Gael rather than the Fianna Fáil vote, and the main opposition party reacted in desperation.
History was repeating itself: Fianna Fáil was in trouble, but Fine Gael was paying the price. A motion of no confidence in Bruton, proposed by the late Jim Mitchell and seconded by Michael Noonan, was passed by 39 votes to 33.
Enda Kenny was the first to speak in favour of Bruton at that parliamentary party meeting. He subsequently threw his hat in the ring for the leadership, pledging that he would “electrify” the party if he won. But on February 6th, 2001, Noonan was elected leader by 44 votes to 28.
The new leader had just over a year to prepare for the next general election which turned out to be a disaster, with Fine Gael losing 23 of its 54 Dáil seats, including 11 members of the front bench.
Noonan resigned while the votes were still being counted. There were four candidates to succeed him and, following the elimination of Phil Hogan and Gay Mitchell, Enda Kenny emerged victorious in the final count over Richard Bruton on June 5th, 2002.
“Fine Gael’s political mourning is over. This party is getting up off the floor and we are determined to demonstrate all over Ireland that we are a political force to be reckoned with in the future,” Mr Kenny said at the time, to the loud cheers of colleagues.