Root-and-branch reforms are under way as Fine Gael faces into a crucial test in next year's local elections, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, in the second of two articles on the state of the party.
The columns of figures which hold the story of Fine Gael's last general election campaign have been examined by the party in excruciating detail as its struggles to find a path for itself for the future.
However, the biggest lesson of all is the easiest one to comprehend and the hardest to do anything about. Fine Gael, numerically and philosophically, was simply irrelevant to the proceedings.
Clinging desperately onto the Celtic Tiger as it entered choppy waters, the electorate recoiled from Fine Gael as it shambolically meandered into the campaign promising tax breaks for taxi-drivers and Eircom shareholders.
"We did not give them options. Labour tried to have an each-way bet on the election, freezing us out. Faced with giving us a vote or the Progressive Democrats, voters plumped for the PDs," said one senior party figure.
Set up after the election, Fine Gael's strategic review group pulled few punches when it reported. "Every year, long-established companies, institutions and so on disappear without trace.
"In many ways, we have been blinkered. We have all been strung out for a generation encouraging social and economic change, presiding over the greatest social revolution in Ireland's history, watching all the old certainties disappear.
"Somehow, it never seemed to occur to us in the traditional political institutions that we would also be swept along in the same wave. Do we somehow think that we are different?" it asked.
The majority of the lessons highlighted by the review group have been learnt.
Organisationally, the party, both inside and outside of the Dáil, was a mess. Its message was blurred.
So far, however, Fine Gael has been less clear about the space it must occupy on the political landscape if it is not to be consigned to another period of opposition, and near-certain doom, after the next general election.
"Fine Gael needs to foster a culture of critical realism where counter-intuitive initiatives deliver real solutions rather than symbolic gestures," declared the Strategic Review Group, though that leaves one little the wiser.
This persistent focus on the party's reason for existence infuriates, among many others, Fine Gael Kilkenny-based Senator John Paul Phelan: "Our biggest strength is that we are the only party that can compete with Fianna Fáil.
"What do we stand for? That question is always asked of Fine Gael. It is never asked of Fianna Fáil. We have navel-gazed for long enough. We have to reassert old values: on crime, ethics, enterprise," he said.
Such answers do not satisfy everyone. A candidate in Dublin North East last year, Mr Gavin Duffy said: "Friends of mine who don't follow politics don't see Fine Gael as being relevant to them. They see it as a rural-based party, a party for large farmers. The party has to become relevant like it was during the 1980s on social issues."
Mr Doyle is being encouraged to run for the party in the local elections.
The party leader, Mr Enda Kenny, has said that future policies will hinge on the party's traditional values, seizing upon and reflecting the feelings of many that the country is a now a less fair society.
However, the room for novel moves in the crowded centre ground is limited. The Government's finances must obey European Union rules and, more importantly, the diktats of the international financial markets.
His focus on "value for money" has so far unconvinced, since it is not backed up by clearly understandable policies that lay out the hard choices to be made, the vested interests to be broken.
Politics in Ireland is still about Fianna Fáil versus the rest despite all the forecasts that moulds have been broken, said Prof Michael March, the head of the department of political science at Trinity College Dublin.
"Fine Gael will not win a significant vote off Fianna Fáil, so they have to pick them up from the rest. But taking votes off Labour is no good to them. Fianna Fáil will still have the mathematical possibility of government after the next election," he believed.
In the medium-term, Fine Gael must produce a good performance from the local elections next yea'r though that is far from guaranteed given the numbers it won in 1999.
Then under the leadership of Mr John Bruton, the party won 277 seats on city, county, urban district and town councils around the country from a 28.1 per cent share of the first-preference vote.
Benefiting from an electoral "bounce", the first-preference share earned Fine Gael 32 per cent of the seats. "I would be happy if we could achieve 26 per cent of the vote, bearing in mind that we finished with 22 per cent in the general election," said one senior party figure.
Such an outcome implicitly accepts losses, particularly since high-profile national politicians will not be running because of the abolition of the dual mandate.
Describing the locals as "absolutely crucial", former Fine Gael TD senator Mr Jim Higgins said: "It's like 1979 after we got hammered in 1977. We then bounced back with a huge new influx of blood. They proved to be the apprentices of 1981 when we got 70 seats."
Mr Higgins would have been a leadership candidate himself had he not lost his Dáil seat last May.
Acknowledging the difficulties ahead, the party leader, Mr Kenny told The Irish Times: "In some areas, we will do very well to hold what we have. We won three out of four in Longford, three out of four in Castlerea. You can't beat that and you won't beat that. In other places we lost only by 100 to 200 votes.
"We will have to up the performances either with a new candidate or by doing better than before. We did well in 1999, taking control of a number of councils. We want to do better now," he said.
Losses would raise questions about Mr Kenny's own future, despite the party's horror of another leadership battle, unless the story is overshadowed by Fianna Fáil suffering an even greater meltdown.
The importance of the local elections is reflected by the amount of energy being expended by Fine Gael in preparation, particularly in Dublin where it has been all but wiped out in Dáil constituencies.
Headed by former TD Mr George Birmingham, the Dublin Regional Taskforce established by Mr Kenny has been busy since January reviewing the situation on the ground in the capital.
The picture is not pretty. In 1982, Fine Gael took 41.1 per cent of the first-preference vote in the capital and 22 seats. Last year, the vote share had collapsed to 14.5 per cent and seat numbers to just three and just one of them north of the Liffey.
Meeting 40 times since the start of the year in various committees, the 30-strong taskforce includes people such as Mr John Bailey and Mr Colm Mac Eochaidh, both unsuccessful Dáil candidates, and Young Fine Gael's Ms Lucinda Creighton.
It has been busy examining the party's organisation, its local appeal and trying to target voters.
"Everyone was asked to review the election, the state of the finances, membership lists, check whether officer lists were active," said one source.
A new office has been set up in the party's Mount Street headquarters to tend to the needs of candidates in the capital, equipped with its own press officer and driven by Fine Gael TD, Mr Gay Mitchell. Root-and-branch reforms are happening at branch level, although the picture is patchy.
Constituencies such as Dublin South East and Dún Laoghaire, once heartlands for Fine Gael, are doing well. Others have barely flickered into life.
Despite the pessimism about the party's future, new candidates are coming forward. In Dún Laoghaire, for instance, 16 hopefuls are currently seeking party nominations.
A Dublin manifesto will be ready by May. "We need to publish it immediately," said one taskforce source.
"The general election manifesto's problem was that it was new to the public. People did not believe that we believed it."
Nationally, the party has launched a recruitment drive and insists that its target of 25,000 members, a rise of approximately 3,500, is both realistic and achievable.
The organisation in Munster and Connacht, particularly, has been given two tasks: to find new branch members for themselves and to locate likely Fine Gael supporters now living in Dublin.
The taskforce is led in Connacht by Mr Higgins, who is upbeat about its possibilities for success, and in Munster by the Waterford-based senator, Mr Maurice Cummins.
Mr Higgins, who hopes to run for the European Parliament, explained: "We are putting together a database so that we can contact people in Dublin who come from strong Fine Gael families down the country. There are loads of people in Dublin whose fathers were the chairman of the local branch back at home, who are totally anonymous to Fine Gael in the housing estates.
"It is amazing the number who disappear. We are calling meetings, asking people to try and think who from the area is living in Dublin, to put together contact details.
"These people will then receive a personal letter from Enda asking them to come to a meeting in Cabra, Rathfarnham or wherever," he told The Irish Times.
The crisis in Dublin illustrates one of Fine Gael's biggest problems: the threat posed by the Progressive Democrats in middle-class constituencies, filled by socially liberal, economically right-wing voters.
Two of the Progressive Democrats' four gains, Dublin South East's Mr Michael McDowell and Dún Laoghaire's Ms Fiona O'Malley, were made at Fine Gael's expense.
"To lose seats in Dún Laoghaire is simply ludicrous," said Prof Marsh.
The threat, however, is not confined to Dublin.
In Longford, Ms Mae Sexton helped to oust outgoing FG TD, Mr Louis Belton, while Mr Tom Parlon's IFA profile eased his passage in Laois-Offaly at the expense of FG's Mr Charlie Flanagan.
One leading FG figure accepted the existence of the threat.
"Fianna Fáil voters are not happy either, but they have nowhere else to go. Ours do. There is the FF vote and there is the non-FF vote. The latter just gets recycled in every election. Fianna Fáil voters went out the last time, but FG ones were browned off and stayed at home or voted for somebody else."
Though the PDs' own fortunes have waxed and waned, one point is clear from an analysis of electoral history published in How Ireland Voted 2002, edited by Prof Marsh, Mr Michael Gallagher and Mr Paul Mitchell.
In the eight elections before the PDs were formed in 1985, Fine Gael broke the 30 per cent first-preference barrier on each occasion. In the five held since then, it has not.
Emphasising the need for planning for the local elections, Mr Kenny said: "Eighty per cent of the conventions will be done by November. For a variety of reasons there will always be 20 per cent that won't be sorted. By springtime we will have it finished."
He had strong words for party councillors who have stayed too long on councils and for candidates who have failed to get elected on past occasions.
"I have made it perfectly clear that we want no messers, no quota squatters. I want competition in every district. I am going to give women and young people the opportunity where possible to stand. I have said that publicly. They know that. When faced with the challenge, I am going to make the decision."
Tough talk is easy, however. Refusing sitting councillors a place on the party ticket will inflame local rivalries and could see some of them, at least, running independent campaigns with a score to settle.
Nevertheless, Mr Kenny, on his record to date, can justly demand the benefit of the doubt. In the 1997 general election, he chaired the party strategy committee which vetted candidates.
"I didn't know much about him then, but he showed plenty of willingness to take the hard decisions. We got good results out of that," said one influential party figure impressed by the experience.
Last year's Seanad elections offer a pointer. Then, relatively high-profile outgoing Fine Gael senators without the prospect of winning Dáil seats were largely left to paddle their own canoes without a party nomination.
Instead, the party successfully threw its efforts behind a younger crop, such as Mr John Paul Phelan, Longford's Mr James Bannon and Mr Joe McHugh from Donegal North East, along with others.
Indeed, the strategy only failed in one instance when outgoing party senator Paul Coghlan held off the challenge of former Cork South Central TD, Ms Deirdre Clune.
"We have never had such a nakedly ambitious group in the Seanad. We are going to get 10, 11 of these fellows into the Dáil. That place is just humming to do the business," Mr Kenny declared.
No matter how many seats Fine Gael wins at the next election, it will need coalition partners and that means providing a government-in-waiting on the Opposition benches long before polling day.
Doubtful about Fine Gael's competence in the last Dáil, the then leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ruairí Quinn, hedged his bets, leaving open, however vaguely, the possibility of a Fianna Fáil alliance.
"The party has to forge in the public mind the view that there is an alternative and that can only be done by co-operation with Labour," said Mr Michael Creed, who lost his seat in Cork North West.
"I'm more optimistic about that happening with Labour under Pat Rabbitte than I would have been with it under Ruairí Quinn. Anybody could have been in government the last time, bar us," he said.
So far, Fine Gael and Labour do not yet qualify. In the early months of the Dáil, they frequently sniped at each other on the Opposition benches, though that has since eased.
A unified approach will probably have to wait until after the locals are out of the way, though a full-scale coalition pact is, for now, a realistic prospect, unlike in the last Dáil.
However, a pact will not heal all ills, particularly if the party's conservative base recoils from a manifesto which appears to have been dictated by Labour.
Despite all the rigorous self-flagellation that has gone on within Fine Gael since May last, the party believes that its day on the political stage is not yet over.
The optimism is based on the current reforms succeeding, a good local election performance, a better Dáil showing and closer ties to Labour.
However, it is also based on an unproven belief that voters will simply have tired of Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach and of Fianna Fáil by the time of the next election.
This feeling that things will simply just come right is not shared by all. Former Dublin South East TD Ms Frances Fitzgerald is worried.
"People will want to see an alternative forming, but that is a dangerous assumption, I believe. There may be disillusionment but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will come to us, unless we earn it."
For Fine Gael, the earning years lie ahead, full of difficulties.