No staying power: Fianna Fail have moment of glory stolen

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

What ever happens in the Dáil this week, for most it will feel like the club fixtures in a county the weekend after it wins the All Ireland. There will be much basking in glory for Labour and Fine Gael and it will seem at least they are going through the motions in terms of the ordinary business.

No so Fianna Fáil. It should have been there enjoying its place in the sun. In the early hours of Sunday morning it made a big breakthrough. After six failed attempts since 2011, it finally won a by-election, when Bobby Aylward triumphed in Carlow-Kilkenny.

The party faithful cheered, letting it be known that this was the moment when the party was finally leaving the political wilderness.

But within a day, its high-profile senator Averill Power was raining on its parade. After building up such hope, everything came tumbling down.

Power’s resignation sent shockwaves through the party.

She was the only Fianna Fail Oireachtas member who was visibly very active throughout the same-sex marriage campaign and it was obvious she was frustrated  and angry at the indolence of her party’s TDs and Senators.

She said Fianna Fáil’s lack of involvement was the straw that broke the camel’s back but. if truth be told, it was more like the round bale that broke said camel’s back.

A few weeks back she asked TDs and Senators campaigning in Kilkenny to at least wear Yes badges and they refused, with some laughing at her, she said. That’s been disputed by party leader Micheal Martin.

The manner of her departure was cold-blooded enought. She put the boot into Martin in her statement and Fianna Fail people were very put out that she had not contacted him out of courtesy before announcing her departure. The best she could say about the party leader was that he was “well meaning”. Talk about being damned by faint praise.

Martin sniped back at her all day and we got into a tit-for-tat row about the motivations of all sides. Fianna Fail said she left because she might be running second fiddle to Sean Haughey in Dublin Bay North. She denied vehemently that she had ever demanded to be the only candidate in the constituency.

There was more than a grain of truth in Power’s charge of the lack of intensity in Fianna Fáil efforts on behalf of the Yes campaign. It might have participated and been active in Dublin but its supporters were invisible elsewhere. They could say that Fine Gael backbenchers down the country were the same. That was true: there were few party canvasses by the bigger parties outside Dublin and the main urban areas.

But that’s not the point. Fine Gael is not a party trying to renew itself as a radical and republican party. Fianna Fáil could  have tried hard.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.