Political year that will live long in the memory

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

What kind of political year was 2016 – and will we remember it in a decade?  What do we remember from 2006, for example, off the top of our heads? Or from 1996, for that matter?

From 1996, not a huge amount. There was still the fall-out from Charlie Haughey’s million euro and the McCracken Tribunal was underway.

From 2006, it was his successor Bertie Ahern’s travails the captured the public mood. The only reason I remember that is that I was on holidays when that story broke and I wasn’t sure if I should come home to cover it.

I’m sure five minutes on google would fill in all the gaps I’ve missed from ten and twenty years ago but there are somethings in life that can’t be googled…such as my impoverished memory!

For anoraks, the abiding memory of 2016 is that it was an election year – and an election year with a difference, producing the most indecisive and uncertain outcome in almost a century of democracy in our State.

And, of course, the pundits (present company included) got it all wrong. Sure, Enda Kenny became the first Fine Gael leader to lead his party to two successive terms in government. But it came at a cost, a loss of 25 seats.

The party steered the country back into solvency and sovereignty but the unpopular policies that were required to do so did not go down with the ungrateful public who gave Fine Gael a kicking and the Labour Party a mauling.

People knew that there would be a lot of churn and uncertainty in the election and the main beneficiaries of this would be the Independents and smaller parties. That was true to a certain extent.

A lot of new Independents were returned but none of the smaller parties made exceptional gains (unless you consider the AAA/PBP moving from four to six TDs was an achievement).

The Independent Alliance gained two also. One of the smaller parties, Renua, became an endangered species a little over a year after being established.

The two parties that made big gains were Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin was the coming party going into the election but it can never really match its poll showings in the actual polls.

Still a nine-seat gain was fine, even though it would have been more had not Gerry Adams performed so poorly in interviews and debates in the run-up to the election.

Fianna Fáil made a big comeback. It’s still some way below its traditional level of support but compared to 2011, its 44 seat was a big success, especially its re-establishment of a strong foothold in Dublin.

Everybody believes now that the party will return to its natural status as the biggest party after the election.

But therein lies another problem that might be an ongoing and intractable one for Irish electoral politics. The total support level for the traditional big three has been declining at a steady pace for two decades.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.