Labour's primary task must be to build its organisation and support rather than simply debate its political positioning, the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, has said.
In a speech to party members in Dublin last night setting out his vision for the future of Labour, Mr Rabbitte said Labour must either assert its role as the leader of the opposition to Fianna Fáil or settle for a supportive role.
Increasing its membership and Dáil representation was the starting point if the party was to implement its values and ideals, he said.
At the first of a series of regional meetings to be held in the lead-up to May's party conference, Mr Rabbitte implicitly warned against the tendency in Labour to devote great energy to debating policy but not enough to winning Dáil seats.
"To achieve our ambitions we must aspire to being in government from a position of power. That means we must succeed in the key, critical arena: the democratic, electoral, parliamentary political arena", he said.
He said the party could and should oppose, campaign, debate and formulate policies. "However, any consideration of the questions of the positioning of Labour or the future of Labour or the renewal of Labour must be from this starting point of achieving enhanced parliamentary representation at the next general election." Although it had often been said that the pursuit of power for its own sake was a recipe for corruption, "the pursuit of values without power is a recipe for sterility. For that reason, whenever we talk about the future of Labour, I want us to be totally committed to growth, to organisation, and to the task of putting Labour into government."
He said a large membership was necessary if Labour is to have a credible presence in communities and neighbourhoods throughout the State, have a voice in various organisations in civil society and get the party message across to the public.
"The approach of growing membership and having penetration and presence and profile in civil society is of the essence in our political system," Mr Rabbitte said.
He added that if Labour was to grow, it had to change. "The way we do our business often excludes participation by women. We can't argue, for example, that young people are disconnected from politics and that that's a problem for them rather than for us."
He asked whether the Labour Party was "sometimes obsessed with old preoccupations that are not priorities of ordinary workers commuting daily to work? Are we sometimes content to oppose for the sake of opposing rather than address some of the more difficult questions that confront our modern society?" He said the old two-and-a-half party political system was dead and that Labour "will either go forward to assert its claim to lead the opposition to Fianna Fáil or it will settle for a supportive role".
He repeated his view that a majority of people think Labour but don't vote Labour. "The new stresses and strains in a more wealthy, more unequal and better-educated society have pulled Fianna Fáil onto the side of those with wealth and property and power and influence," he said.