Fallout for Fianna Fáil: New Cabinet faces alone will not be enough to revive the fortunes of Fianna Fáil, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent.
For years Bertie Ahern has made a career out of delaying decisions for as long as possible, carefully gauging the implications of every move.
However, he is rapidly coming to a fork in the road where he will have to make choices that will decide his own future and that of Fianna Fáil for years to come.
Yesterday he promised "a major reshuffle" of his senior ministerial ranks in September. He has said this on several occasions in recent months.
The timing is significant and hardly coincidental, since it will protect Ahern from internal criticism at tonight's Parliamentary Party meeting and in the weeks ahead.
Disgruntled Fianna Fáil TDs, and there are more than a few, will be wise to keep their counsel in the hope of autumn preferment.
However, the Taoiseach has talked about Cabinet changes before - in the months before the 2002 general election, and then failed to deliver.
"Bertie's idea of a reshuffle is when David Andrews stood down. The next one will have to look like a major change to everybody. Everybody," said one Fianna Fáil TD.
Questions will be raised about Joe Walsh and Michael Smith, obviously, but Noel Dempsey also figures on the 'hit-list' of backbenchers.
But personality changes are not enough. "There is no point changing the band if you end up playing the same music," said one Munster deputy last night.
The tone is all wrong, said the deputy, who, reflecting the views of others, said: "The public are saying that the State is coming more and more into living rooms and they don't like it."
The mood was especially evident in working class communities, the very ones where Sinn Féin were ready, waiting and able to exploit.
Aside from being discontented with the health service, voters "are browned off about penalty points, the NCT, the Community Employment Schemes (CES), and smokers about the smoking ban," said one mid-west TD.
The CES problems touch an especially raw nerve with backbenchers, who complained for months prior to the last budget, only then to be thrown a bone from the Cabinet's table. Increasingly, voters take economic good times, or at least the lack of a recession, for granted, and offer little thanks to a Government claiming credit for it.
"They acknowledge that the economy is doing well, but they now want to know what we are doing with all of the resources. It is a whole different kind of politics," said another.
In the months before the election Ahern offered apparently contradictory messages to his parliamentary party: losses would be suffered, but SF could be tackled.
However, SF's gains came almost exclusively at the expense of FF, and the council beachheads gained by the party threaten FF Dáil seats next time..
"The votes that were lost to SF in working class communities are not coming back. The question is whether we can stop the haemorrhage," a Cork TD conceded .
Fianna Fáil's relationship with the Progressive Democrats now threatens to become increasingly irritable as FF TDs weigh up the chances that they could lose their own seats.
The PDs' economic policies, agreed with and implemented by Charlie McCreevy, are becoming intolerable to some backbenchers.
"We are a centre, centre-left party. Bertie keeps saying that we are. But we look like a party of big business because of the PDs," one Munster TD said.
The TDs' promise to be more bolshie come the autumn inevitably holds the threat of conflict, especially given Tánaiste Mary Harney's clarion call for faster reform.
The Progressive Democrats will benefit electorally from the break-up of Aer Rianta, the partial privatisation of Dublin Bus routes and other current contentious issues.
The difficulty is that with just two years or more to go to the next election, a broadly-based party such as Fianna Fáil will not, cannot benefit from such rapid, difficult-to-achieve reform, even if it proves to be the right thing to do in the end.
"They will get a bounce from this to some extent. All we will do is get up people's noses by doing this. They won't vote for us for doing it, but they will vote against us if they disagree," one TD complained.
Last night Cavan/Monaghan TD Brendan Smith, who is highly regarded by his peers, issued the first serious shot across the junior coalition partners' bows.
However, if the PDs' star must descend in the interests of Fianna Fáil's salvation, then the same applies to the current occupant of the Department of Finance, Charlie McCreevy.
The Taoiseach's reshuffle must fundamentally change the political mood, but this cannot happen unless McCreevy quits, or is forced to leave Merrion Street. Such an outcome would not have been predicted months ago, and it may not be even in the Taoiseach's mind, but it is in the mind of every FF TD spoken to by The Irish Times for days.
No doubt McCreevy will feel hard done by, and argue that he has money bags put aside for the general election to increase spending as he did prior to 2002.
However, it is hard to pull the same stunt twice. Meanwhile, the Taoiseach must decide on Ireland's next European commissioner. A Cabinet appointment frees up another place.
Joe Walsh, who is Europe's longest serving Minister for Agriculture, is gagging for the journey to Brussels to take over from David Byrne.
But Walsh's ascension would infuriate backbenchers who point to his Cork South West conduct as proof that he has never once put the party interests above his own.
McCreevy's departure, if such could be arranged, from Kildare North would be little better, since McCreevy's 2002 running mate, Paul Kelly, would inevitably struggle.
However, the appointment of Walsh, or indeed any other member of the Cabinet, would create the need for an unwelcome bye-election. Governments usually lose bye-elections without suffering terminal damage, but these are not ordinary times. If a bye-election is to be held, it would happen in the new year.
Such a defeat months after Ahern re-launches his newly reshaped, reformed Cabinet would be little short of a disaster, yet seemingly impossible to avoid.
In 1979 Jack Lynch's leadership went into free-fall after Fine Gael's Liam Burke and Myra Barry won bye-elections in Cork City and Cork North East. Bertie Ahern will have learnt that lesson well.