No skeletons at FF's upbeat review

The Fianna Fail parliamentary party will gather at the Slieve Russell Hotel in Co Cavan this evening to consider the challenges and opportunities of the future and to plan for the new millennium.

Not for them an excavation of the bones of past misdeeds or a rummaging about in mildewed closets. Political skeletons and financial misdeeds have been firmly consigned to the past. Here is a born-again party, determined to shape and to dominate the future.

The message from the Taoiseach is unambiguous. Support for the party in opinion polls, in the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement, is at an all-time high. The past is a foreign country. If things are managed correctly, tomorrow will belong to Fianna Fail.

According to this scenario, Charlie Haughey and Ray Burke are yesterday's men; rogue cells in the body politic; individuals who let down Fianna Fail and departed from the traditional high standards of the party. The future under Bertie Ahern, young leader for a young country, will be different.

The essence of this new departure lies in proper planning and anticipation. Fianna Fail, the party of pragmatism, the party that once made policy as events dictated, is to be transformed. Flexibility and hard-headed realism will survive; but political positioning and a re-invention of roles will become a priority.

A whiff of this novelty can be seen in the decision to have NCB stockbrokers and the Economic and Social Research Institute make opening presentations to TDs and Senators on the political and social implications of recent, 10-year assessments of future growth rates. NCB predicted an average growth rate of 6 per cent for the next five years and suggested the Government's coffers could be in surplus to the tune of £4.7 billion by 2003. The population would grow to 4.4 million by 2026. And the number of cars on the road would increase by 50 per cent over the next eight years, with serious implications for gridlock and infrastructural spending.

Those projections are grounded in the presumption that wage demands will continue to be moderate; that tax cuts will be focused on the less well off; that inflation will be controlled and that much of the surplus cash will be spent on infrastructural projects and on repayment of the national debt.

ESRI predictions are, if anything, rosier-hued than those of NCB. But it advocates spending a slice of the largess on redressing inequalities within society and combating deprivation in urban and rural areas.

Planning to drive a BMW-style economy is a novel proposition in this State. Rory O'Hanlon, chairman of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party, says the three-hour plenary session will set the tone for the two-day think-in.

The needs of the electorate - and its demographic trends - will be carefully evaluated. Future demands on the education and health systems will be looked at, as will issues like regionalisation and infrastructural requirements. Tomorrow morning, eight workshops will deal with various policy areas and, in the afternoon, reports will be made to a plenary session. That meeting will also review the party's organisation; assess its readiness to fight next year's European and local elections and arrange a schedule for policy-formation committees.

There will be no looking back. Dr O'Hanlon is adamant that this is an innovative exercise, designed to prepare the party for new opportunities. Issues from the past - to do with Mr Burke, Mr Haughey or anyone else - would be dealt with at the weekly meetings of the parliamentary party, he said. That was where current issues were decided. This was a different, long-term project.

In planning for the future, Fianna Fail is doing no more than other Dail parties. Politics, like economic strategy, has moved from being largely reactive into a creative, innovative phase. Anticipating trends may well decide future success.

It is always more difficult for the party or parties of government to look beyond the immediate crisis that besets them. Distance and tensions inevitably develop between ministers and their backbenchers. And friction grows between competitive coalition partners.

There is an element of political "stroking" in the Slieve Russell exercise: a neutralisation of disaffected elements; a mid-term union of ministers and backbenchers; a binding-up of the party and the establishment of common objectives.

A caring identity, separate from the Progressive Democrats, is also being refurbished in the aftermath of Charlie McCreevy's "rich man's Budget".

The initiator in that regard was Sile de Valera. The Minister for Arts, Culture, Heritage, the Gaeltacht, and the Islands demanded last month that the party respond to the issues of homelessness, social exclusion and the growing gap between the affluent majority and the marginalised. Quoting elements of the Constitution, she identified unemployment, single-parent families and refugees as issues that Fianna Fail must address.

The parliamentary party will take all those issues on board when it meets in Co Cavan over the next two days as, with an eye to opinion polls, it contemplates the heady prospect of an overall Dail majority.