RSS Feeds

Ahern plans to make it three in a row and emulate de Valera

NO OF SEATS IN OUTGOING DÁIL: 80
NATIONAL SHARE OF VOTE 2002: 41.48%

Fianna Fáil: Bertie Ahern has served for an uninterrupted decade in the Taoiseach's office thanks to a stunning election victory five years ago that brought him within a whisker of an overall Dáil majority, writes Stephen Collins, Political Editor.

His return to power ensured that he was in a position to continue the policies on the economy, Northern Ireland and Europe that had proved so successful in his first term, and in the process he became the second longest-serving Taoiseach after Éamon de Valera.

However, the election victory of 2002 came at a price. During the campaign the Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy pledged that "no cutbacks, secret or otherwise" were being planned to deal with the economic slowdown that gripped the world economy in late 2001.

However, once they were back in government curbs on public spending were immediately introduced. While this prompt action helped to keep the economy on track, it damaged Fianna Fáil's credibility to such an extent that in 2004 the party suffered the worst European and local election results in its history. It was a remarkable turnaround in two years, particularly as the economy continued to do well.

The general election campaign of 2002 was a remarkable triumph for Mr Ahern, who came within touching distance of Fianna Fáil's first overall majority since 1977. It had become a truism of Irish politics that overall majorities were a thing of the past.

The prevailing wisdom was that Fianna Fáil's acceptance of coalition and the establishment of an independent constituency commission in the late 1970s had made an overall majority impossible, but Mr Ahern came tantalisingly close to one.

Fianna Fáil dominated the last general election campaign from day one, when the party's director of elections, PJ Mara, proclaimed: "It's showtime."

The failure of the main Opposition parties to offer an alternative government torpedoed any chance they had of gaining seats and it quickly became clear that FF was on the way back to power.

What was not clear until very near the end of the campaign was that Fianna Fáil had an overall majority in its sights.

The party strategists knew the prospect was there, but they talked it down for fear of losing voters who might recoil from a return to one-party government.

Michael McDowell and the PDs played up the prospect for their own tactical reasons, but Fianna Fáil still came remarkably close.

Outright victory was only snatched from the party by two PD wins against the odds in Galway West and Longford. Nonetheless, Fianna Fáil ended up with 81 seats, just two short of the elusive overall majority.

Bertie Ahern returned to power with the PDs in June 2002 for his second term of office. As the PDs had eight seats, his second Government had a secure majority, in contrast to his first which relied on the support of three Independents for its existence.

Charlie McCreevy returned to Finance and the Government appeared set to continue where it had left off. With the badly-mauled Opposition parties focusing on pulling themselves together, the only pressure the Government faced in its first year was entirely of its own making.

The commitment not to make cutbacks began to look very hollow when it emerged that the Department of Finance had been planning spending curbs during the election campaign itself.

Mr McCreevy argued vehemently that what was involved was controlling public spending, not cutting it.

Although he was right, the clampdown appeared to contradict the claims made during the election campaign and the Government was on the back foot from the very beginning.

Although economic growth picked up again in 2004, mainly due to the construction boom rather than the exports that fuelled the boom of the 1990s, Fianna Fáil received a drubbing in the 2004 European and local elections.

The scale of the reverse came as a huge shock to the party, particularly as Fine Gael had been left for dead in 2002 and many pundits had been forecasting its demise.

The Taoiseach's reaction to the reverse was to send Charlie McCreevy to Brussels as Ireland's EU Commissioner and to replace him with Brian Cowen, who had been serving in Foreign Affairs for the previous five years.

Mr Ahern also retired some senior Ministers and promoted Mary Hanafin and Willie O'Dea to the Cabinet.

A shift in emphasis in budgetary strategy emerged in Mr Cowen's first budget with a greater focus on the lower paid and the elderly rather than high earners.

Mr Ahern publicly described himself as a socialist and invited Fr SeáHealy, the campaigner for the underprivileged, to address the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party at its autumn get-together.

When the opinion polls showed the party recovering most of its lost ground in early 2005 it appeared that the corner had been turned and Fianna Fáil would be able to power its way to the following election.

However, the loss of two byelections, in Meath and Kildare North, in 2005 was another warning to Mr Ahern Fianna Fáil still had a lot of ground to make up.

The party's poll ratings began to slip again and they did not recover in the first half of 2006.

The Taoiseach's persistence in pursuing his quest for a settlement in the North, despite a series of setbacks, paid off in the end with the decision of Ian Paisley and the DUP to enter a powersharing Executive with Sinn Féin.

To cap this triumph, the date for the establishment of the executive was fixed for May 8th, just in the middle of the election campaign that will determine whether Mr Ahern can pull off his third successive victory.

Mr Ahern showed the same dogged persistence in his pursuit of agreement among the 25 nations of the EU on a new constitutional treaty during the Irish presidency of 2004. His abilities as a conciliator proved decisive in getting the agreement of the 25 government leaders to a deal, but its subsequent rejection by the voters of France and the Netherlands put paid to all the good work, at least for the present.

The moving ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin to mark the accession of the 10 new EU member states in 2004 was the high point of the Irish presidency.

By the end of 2006 it looked as if Mr Ahern was on course for a third term in a row, with the only question being who his coalition partners might be.

However, in spite of last December's budget and the €84 billion National Development Plan announced in January, Fianna Fáil support, as measured in the opinion polls, slipped again in early 2007. Whatever happens in the current general election it is not going to be the walkover of 2002.

The huge seat bonus acquired by Fianna Fáil is unlikely to be repeated, so that even if the party wins about 40 per cent of the vote it could lose 10 seats.

If the vote drops down into the high 30 per cent range or even lower, the losses would be even greater.

Mr Ahern will have a battle on his hands to emulate Éamon de Valera and become the second Taoiseach in the history of the State to win three in a row.

Fianna Fáil website