Taoiseach ensures political obituary is not written yet

World of Politics with Harry McGee

If you reel back a year and listened to what Fianna Fáil politicians were saying then, there was a consensus – not overwhelming but strong – that Micheál Martin’s reign as leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach would be coming to an end this year. The party had performed poorly in the general election and had bumped along at the bottom in all the opinion polls between January 2020 and Summer 2021.

Fianna Fáil had started abysmally in government; two FF Ministers for Agriculture fell on their swords within weeks of each other and the party took the brunt of the blame for Golfgate.

Martin’s start to his tenure as Taoiseach was uncertain – and even accepting that the State was in the throes of Covid, he just did not seem to have the authority and stature of Leo Varadkar. Plus, there were opponents waiting in the grass within Fianna Fáil.

His cause was not helped either by the fact that the entire country seemed to be run virtually, with the Oireachtas meeting in the National Convention Centre and the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meetings being held by Zoom.

There were long delays in getting the inquiry up and running into why Fianna Fáil had done so badly in the 2020 general elections; it had gone in with 44 seats with expectations of getting 55 or more; instead it ended up with 37 and would have had less had Sinn Féin ran a decent slate of candidates.

It took a year for Martin to sort the problems out – and the time and place of the turnaround can be pinpointed. It was the Slieve Russell Hotel in Ballyconnell, where Fianna Fáil held its first ‘think-in’ in person.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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