Crossing the Rubicon: Fianna Fáil grassroots weigh up the Sinn Féin coalition option

Martin Monaghan walks through to the back kitchen of his family’s butcher shop in Longford town. Out front his father, Christy, is serving customers. The talk is about the Killoe Young Emmet’s narrow victory over Clonguish in the recent county football final. That’s an unhealed scar for Martin, the chairman of the Clonguish club.

In the back kitchen, Martin stands beside a butcher’s block, which has been around for a long time. It has been whittled down from decades of scouring with wire brushes, but remains solid. Such things were made to last.

The Monaghan family’s connection with Fianna Fáil goes back as long as the block has stood in the butcher’s shop. Christy became involved when Albert Reynolds was a councillor in 1970.

“Politics was always in the background in our house and played a huge part in my father’s life,” says Martin.

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It was two opposites coming together. A lot of the older members were not in favour of it. Personally, I myself wasn’t in favour at the time. I do think you lose a bit of your identity and your do a bit of damage to the party. I was wary

—  Martin Monaghan, Fianna Fáil councillor, on going into coalition with Fine Gael

For 20 years Martin was a classic backroom operator, but has been a councillor since 2019. Now in his 50s, for much of his adult life there was a certainty to his politics. But the churn of the past decade has confronted core Fianna Fáil members like him with uncomfortable choices. None more so than the decision in 2020 to form a coalition Government with its main historical rival, Fine Gael, and the Greens.

“It was two opposites coming together,” he says. “A lot of the older members were not in favour of it. Personally, I myself wasn’t in favour at the time. I do think you lose a bit of your identity and your do a bit of damage to the party. I was wary.”

Half an hour’s drive south, after crossing the Shannon into Connacht, Fianna Fáil Senator Eugene Murphy and the chairman of the party’s Comhairle Dáil Ceantair, Pádraig Burke (know as P), are in the bar of the Abbey Hotel in Roscommon. They are reminiscing about the struggle they had in convincing local members to support a coalition with Fine Gael.

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“Even within the party we went to meetings across the country and people were very bitter,” says Burke. “I remember saying to myself when it was coming to the vote, Jesus is this going to go against us tonight?”

Murphy murmurs about how decisive the vote in favour turned out to be. “It was 76 per cent in the end,” he says.

In Dublin North-West, too, there were reservations. “It certainly would not have been my first choice as a coalition,” says Keith Connolly, a young councillor from Finglas. “If Covid was not there I’m not sure I would have voted in favour.”

For anyone under 40, Fianna Fáil is the MySpace of Irish politics, a once-popular brand that most have now left behind. Its own parliamentarians fret constantly about what will happen if its star turn, Micheál Martin, decides to call it quits

The popular narrative about Fianna Fáil right now is of a half-slain giant, with each election bringing it a little closer to its end. The party has struggled to define itself in a rapidly changing political landscape, with support levels regularly dipping below 20 per cent in Irish Times/Ipsos opinion polls.

For anyone under 40, Fianna Fáil is the MySpace of Irish politics, a once-popular brand that most have now left behind. Its own parliamentarians fret constantly about what will happen if its star turn, Micheál Martin, decides to call it quits.

On a whistle-stop tour of four constituencies ahead of the party’s ardfheis this weekend, those preconceptions did not survive fully intact. Talking to ordinary members, as well as TDs, senators and councillors, the mood was surprisingly buoyant. Right now, the Fianna Fáil grassroots seem comfortable with the party’s performance in Government, but temper it with a realistic take on the challenges ahead.

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“With what the country has been through since 2020 and Covid, I think the Coalition has worked together for the benefit of all,” is Monaghan’s assessment after three years.

In an upstairs room in Finglas later that night, nine local Fianna Fáil members (most of them young), led by Paul McAuliffe TD, discuss how the party has fared in the three-way arrangement. The sentiment on the whole is chipper – and this is coming from grassroots people who don’t tend to sugarcoat their comments.

Briege MacOscar, a young councillor in the constituency, argues that the party’s identity has been better in Government than when it had in a confidence-and-supply deal with the Fine Gael minority government from 2016 to 2020.

“For me, one of our defining characteristics is that we’re problem-solvers,” he says. “In this community of Finglas and Ballymun the legislation on scrambler bikes [to prevent their antisocial use] is an example of that.

“Contrast that with what went before, where there was an inability or just a lack of recognition of issues that affected working-class communities.”

They all accept that sharing power with Fine Gael is a double-edged sword. Cllr Rachael Batten is of the view that some core Fianna Fáil principles have been diluted, especially in terms of infrastructure and tackling crime.

“There’s lots of things that we’re doing well,” she says. “I think there probably wasn’t a better alternative. Certainly I do still have concerns.”

There is unanimous backing for Martin’s leadership, cementing the view that his position is unassailable.

“Fianna Fáil has certainly put its fingerprints on this Government,” says Longford TD Joe Flaherty. “Most of it is probably due to the leadership of Micheál Martin. He really came of age in his time in the taoiseach’s office.”

The strongest theme from all four constituencies is a sense among members that Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has made a success out of his portfolio, and that this will be borne out by positive housing numbers over the next 15 months.

Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee lists the extension of the free schoolbook schemes to second-level, the extension of children’s allowance to those over 18 still in education, and reductions in school transport costs as classic Fianna Fáil-side initiatives.

With Stephen Donnelly and the Department of Health, the enthusiasm is less obvious. It is a “pinch point” for the party, admits Clifford-Lee, who nonetheless defends the Minister for Health.

There is a chance that having crossed the Rubicon once with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil may be asked to do so again with Sinn Féin after the next election. There are very diverse views on this

McAuliffe maintains that the “mood-ometer” on the doors in his constituency is rising for his party’s candidates, although he throws in a dash of realism.

“The big challenge for us is, can we escape the shackles of confidence and supply? The perfect slogan for the next election is, ‘A Lot Done, More to Do’. It’s the classic first-term slogan,” he says. “The reality is we have done a lot but will the voters trust us again? There’s a cohort of people out there who want to change government no matter what.”

There is a chance that having crossed the Rubicon once with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil may be asked to do so again with Sinn Féin after the next election. There are very diverse views on this among those who spoke to The Irish Times.

It’s a hard No for Martin Monaghan. “I would not be willing to go into government with Sinn Féin. I know the past is the past. But I think the youth of today need to be educated on what went on in the Troubles.”

Keith Connolly says he would consider his membership of Fianna Fáil if it made a deal with Sinn Féin in future.

Among the rest, the views that are mostly of the “wait and see” variety, especially evident among younger members.

“As a party we sometimes will have to step up and work with whoever is actually voted in,” says 18-year-old Co Roscommon Leaving Cert student Rachael Trimble.

In Finglas, Liam Gleeson does not exclude the possibility of a Coalition entirely, even though he thinks the parties are very different in terms of policy and outlook.

“I think the idea that we can just say no to going into government with them is just not right,” he says. “I do think it will be very tough for the party. People do have deep-rooted views on aspects of their history.

“But there’s a growing cohort of voters who don’t care what the Provisional IRA did in 1980. That’s just the political reality.”

In Skerries, part of the Dublin Fingal constituency, which is due to be divided at the next election, Clifford-Lee, wearing a colourful scarf, walks along the main street on a cool, blustery day greeting locals. The Senator represents one of the party’s strongest chances of gaining a seat in the next Dáil and proving it is not in terminal decline, a premise she does not accept.

“I think that’s an untrue narrative that we need to nip in the bud, that we are all just being steamrollered into a fait accompli,” she says. “We are very far from an election. A lot can happen in a couple of months, or even in the weeks of an election campaign. Things change very rapidly.

“We live in a democracy. People are clued in. Many people haven’t made up their minds. It’s all to play for.”

It’s still a far cry from its heyday. But going into this weekend, the party faithful believe that despite all its travails, Fianna Fáil stands solid, just like the block in Monaghan’s butcher’s shop.