ANALYSIS:Fianna Fáil has fallen like never before and large areas of the Republic are without a TD representing the party, writes MARY MINIHAN
THE NIGHTMARE scenario has come to pass for the party of near-permanent power in this State. In the aftermath of this general election, Fianna Fáil is a decayed wreck of a political movement.
The party which left the 30th Dáil with 72 TDs will limp back to Leinster House next week with in the order of 20 shell-shocked deputies. As it turned out, there was no sense of shame preventing voters from telling pollsters they would vote for Fianna Fáil. The people have left the party.
Disaster has struck in Dublin, with just Brian Lenihan still standing, but there are Fianna Fáil-free constituencies all over the country.
Comparisons with Fine Gael’s fate in 2002, and subsequent potential to rebuild, do not stack up because Fianna Fáil was a much bigger party falling from a much greater height.
The mantle of Uachtarán Fhianna Fáil which passed from Eamon de Valera to Seán Lemass and on to Jack Lynch, Charlie Haughey, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen has rested with Micheál Martin only since shortly before the election – as he pointed out to reporters yesterday.
Martin, a keen student of Fianna Fáil history and lore, reached all the way back to de Valera for inspiration on how the party might be brought forward. “I’m always taken with the capacity of the party when it was established in [1926] to actually, in its first decade, evolve from what was a splinter group, a fairly marginalised party in ’26 which was known as the third Sinn Féin party, the anti-Treaty party,” he said.
“I mean, only half the deputies came with de Valera on that occasion and he managed to mould and fashion a very vibrant national political force out of that, and that illustrates what is possible in politics, and I believe it’s possible again on this occasion.”
His assessment of what has happened during this dramatic weekend just past? “Obviously the tide went out for us in this election.”
While every political party in the history of the State has experienced the ebb and flow of the public’s affections, Fianna Fáil has never been brought so low.
It remains astonishing to reflect on just how much of the past 80 years the party has spent in power. Fianna Fáil and de Valera utterly dominated Ireland’s political scene throughout the 1930s and most of the 1940s, resuming power in the early 1950s following a brief interlude during which an inter-party government took the reins. A second inter-party administration featured for a period in the mid-1950s, but Fianna Fáil’s grip on the levers of power resumed from 1957 until 1973, with Seán Lemass taking the position of taoiseach in 1959 and Jack Lynch in 1966.
After Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave and his Labour tánaiste Brendan Corish served between 1973 and 1977, Lynch was back in 1977 and the tumultuous Haughey years began as the 1980s beckoned. Haughey traded places with Fine Gael’s Garret FitzGerald throughout the decade and was succeeded by Reynolds in 1992.
The rainbow coalition of the mid-1990s gave way once again to Fianna Fáil in 1997, this time under Ahern, and the three-time taoiseach presided over a dizzily prosperous period in the party’s electoral history, slumping towards Cowen’s short stint. It is impossible to quantify whether changing the party leader shortly before the election made any difference to the final seat count.
A series of high-profile retirements in the run-up to this election, criticised by Martin yesterday, led to a belief that so-called Portillo moments would be thin on the ground, but this was not to be.
Scions of political dynasties were among those felled and ministerial casualties included outgoing tánaiste Mary Coughlan in Donegal South West and deputy leader Mary Hanafin in Dún Laoghaire. No women were returned.
The recently discovered “Ógra generation” had a short lifespan and has been sliced in half with the loss of young pretenders Thomas Byrne, Darragh O’Brien and Barry Andrews.
Dick Roche polled just 3,897 first preferences in Wicklow; a shaken-looking Pat Carey took in the result of his Dublin North West constituency, well ahead of the first count, in the RDS on Saturday afternoon.
Among the many other big names to tumble were John O’Donoghue, Mary O’Rourke, Conor Lenihan, Martin Mansergh and Frank Fahey.
Martin did his best to accentuate the positive yesterday, pointing to the re-election of Billy Kelleher in Cork North Central, Dara Calleary in Mayo and Michael McGrath in his own Cork South Central constituency, as well as Niall Collins’s
achievement in the Limerick three-seater. Non-incumbents he mentioned were Charlie McConalogue in Donegal North East and Robert Troy in Longford-Westmeath. Cowen’s brother Barry is another successful non-incumbent.
But do those others who remain fit the bill of radical opposition promised by Martin? Fianna Fáil is now the Ozymandias of Irish politics. Like the once all-powerful ruler in Shelley’s poem, whose colossal wreck of a statue crumbles into the desert sands as his mighty works are long forgotten, the party’s legacy has been shattered. “Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
FIANNA FÁIL
Projected seats: 20 (2007: 78)
Share of first preference vote:17.4% (2007: 41.6%)
TDs WHO LOST THEIR SEATS
Michael Ahern
Barry Andrews
Chris Andrews
Bobby Aylward
Áine Brady
Cyprian Brady
Johnny Brady
Thomas Byrne
Pat Carey
Margaret Conlon
Seán Connick
Mary Coughlan
John Curran
Michael Fitzpatrick
Mary Hanafin
Seán Haughey
Maire Hoctor
Peter Kelly
Brendan Kenneally
Michael Kennedy
Conor Lenihan
Martin Mansergh
Tom McEllistrim
Michael Mulcahy
Darragh O'Brien
Charlie O'Connor
John O'Donoghue
Mary O'Rourke
Christy O'Sullivan
Peter Power
Seán Power
Eamon Scanlon
STILL STANDING: FF TDS
John McGuinness (55), Carlow Kilkenny
Brendan Smith (54), Cavan Monaghan
Timmy Dooley (42), Clare
Billy Kelleher (43), Cork North Central
Michael Moynihan (43), Cork North West
Micheál Martin (50), Cork South Central
Michael McGrath (34), Cork South Central
Charlie McConalogue (33), Donegal North East
Brian Lenihan (51), Dublin West
Éamon Ó Cuív (60), Galway West – subject to recount
Seán Ó Feargháil (60), Kildare South
Niall Collins (37), Limerick
Willie O'Dea (58), Limerick City
Robert Troy (29), Longford-Westmeath
Séamus Kirk (65), Louth – ceann comhairle, automatically returned
Dara Calleary (37), Mayo
John Browne (62), Wexford
Michael Kitt (60), Galway East
NO FF TDS 25: CONSTITUENCIES
Cork East
Cork South West
Donegal South West
Dublin Central
Dublin Mid West
Dublin North
Dublin North Central
Dublin North East
Dublin North West
Dublin South
Dublin South Central
Dublin South East
Dublin South West
Dún Laoghaire
Kerry North-West Limerick
Kerry South
Kildare North
Meath East
Meath West
Roscommon-South Leitrim
Tipperary North
Tipperary South
Sligo-North Leitrim
Waterford