Backbenchers get angsty as Sinn Féin shines in the polls

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Maybe it’s the political version of the seven-year itch, but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael backbenchers have both been in a particularly moany mood of the last week. We might also call it an outbreak of the two-year hives; the more you scratch them the worse they get.

Last week, Offaly TD Barry Cowen tabled a motion at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis essentially calling for the party to get its act together. He said the leadership had promised last year they’d set out new policies and new ideas that would allow Fianna Fáil to clearly stand for certain principles.

“We need policies and values that can roll off the tongue when we are talking to members and to the public. We need to be able to go with our chest out and say to people: ‘If you vote for us this is what you are going to get,’” Cowen told me.

He was particularly exercised that the party was being sidelined by Sinn Féin on one of its core values – that of republicanism. Micheál Martin, he argued, needed to name a date for a border poll, something he has refused to do.

Over in Fine Gael, there is also serious angst. Like their Fianna Fáil counterparts, backbenchers have been complaining for months about the backlog in the passport office, and the long delays in issuing passports (new ones in particular). There were also bitter complaints about the fiasco at Dublin Airport the previous weekend.

The arguments that Mayo TD Michael Ring and his Fianna Fáil constituency colleague Dara Calleary were separately making was that TDs have been raising these issues until they are blue in the face and nothing has been done about them.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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