Who can breathe new life in the old Fianna Fáil dog?

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

A little like the Irish language, most discussion on Fianna Fáil these days tends to be the existential question about its survival prospects.

The party may have been on life support in early 2011, but four years later you would have expected it to have finished its convalescence and thrown away the crutches.

Instead, it finds itself still struggling to garner the kind of level of public support it needs to re-establish it firmly as one of the big two.

It is true opinion polls give relatively crude indications of real support levels but as they are the only indicators besides elections, everybody relies on them including the political parties themselves, most of which conduct private polls.

Over a long period of time, if a party’s support level isn’t budging or is slipping, it is inevitable that alarm bells will ring.

Fianna Fáil’s showing of 17 per cent in the latest Irish Times/Ipsos mrbi polls reflects a pattern that has been evident for a year – that the party does not seem to be going anywhere.

Since May 2014, the polls have consistently shown the party at around this level – a trend that suggests inertia, or to use Eamon Ó Cuív’s term, a party that is “becalmed”.

Invariably, new questions have arisen surrounding Micheál Martin authority, given extra urgency by recent criticisms of his leadership and the party’s direction by John McGuinness and – over the weekend – Ó Cuív.

The latter said the party’s morale was on the floor. He also argued it needs to be more radical, in taking on not only the government but also the emerging threat of Sinn Féin.

Is there an immediate threat to Martin’s leadership? The indications are no. He leads a much enfeebled predominantly male parliamentary party and as Willie O’Dea noted recently, he sees no Messiah when he looks around the party rooms, including when he looks in the mirror.

Last Saturday week on Claire Byrne’s show on RTE Radio One, McGuinness said he would like to lead Fianna Fáil but he is unlikely to garner significant support.

Two events in coming months will become critical for Martin. The first is his need for a strong and buoyant Árd Fheis in Dublin at the end of April. The party needs to come out of it with significant eye-catching policies, and also demonstrate that it can offer the electorate different choices and real alternative in terms of policy positions.

It is just not doing that at the moment. It has published around 20 policy papers. Some are worthy – suicide prevention; mental health; youth unemployment; solutions to help those in mortgage arrears – but the party needs to deal with the big bests (health and education, the future of the economy) in a meaningful way.

Secondly, the party badly needs a morale-boosting win in the Carlow-Kilkenny by-election the following month.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.