ANALYSIS:Fianna Fáil candidates hold the Taoiseach responsible for the party's dismal showing at the local elections, writes MARK HENNESSY
FOLLOWING THE 2004 local election results, Fianna Fáil convinced itself that the situation could never get any worse, that the councillors’ ranks had been cut to the bone and could not be wounded again.
On meeting the survivors, the then minister for the environment, Dick Roche, told them that anyone who could get elected against the cold political winds of 2004 would get elected in any contest.
Not so. Today, Fianna Fáil knows it is attracting historically low support and holds fewer than 20 out of 130 seats in all of the four Dublin councils.
It has also suffered heavy falls in Cork, and holds just six council seats in South Tipperary, down from 10. The haemorrhage in urban areas is severe.
Fianna Fáil now holds just one seat on Limerick City Council and on Waterford City Council – down from the four that were elected to the latter council under the party’s flag just five years ago.
Sitting over a late breakfast yesterday, councillor Arthur McDonald, a leading figure in Fianna Fáil’s national councillors’ organisation, talked of defeated colleagues in the way that old soldiers remember fallen comrades.
“I am one of the lucky ones. I got the vote of the people. At this stage I am very, very angry. I have to get the full list of casualties. We lost a lot of good people, a lot of them good friends of mine, who never did anything wrong. I think there will be recriminations,” he said.
The military analogy is appropriate, judging by the fury visible yesterday from successful Fianna Fáil councillors and those who failed to get elected towards the party’s leadership and headquarters.
Councillor Joe Queenan, who was successful in his re-election campaign in the Dromore electoral area of Sligo County Council, said in public what many of them believe in private: “We were thrown to the wolves.”
A meeting of national councillors is now likely to be held, to help vent or channel councillors’ anger. “I would certainly like to see one. I will certainly be calling a meeting of the executive,” said McDonald.
In the past, Taoiseach Brian Cowen has been able to impose his authority on such gatherings, but he cannot be so confident in future given that many are personally angry with him, believing that his unpopularity damaged them.
“He kept saying that we wouldn’t lose seats, which only encouraged people to say ‘Oh yes you will’. They went out to teach us a lesson because of what he was saying,” a Dublin Fianna Fáil councillor said.
Fianna Fáil family dynasties suffered varying fortunes: Seán Martin, one of Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin’s brothers, was elected to Cork City Council, while another, Padraig, failed to win a seat on Cork County Council in Carrigaline.
However, there was the occasional piece of good news for Fianna Fáil: Seán Doherty’s daughter Rachel won in the Roscommon County Council race, while Senator Terry Leyden’s daughter Orla will join her there.
Despite all the electoral losses and the anger felt by councillors and unsuccessful party candidates about Cowen’s performance and that of his fellow Ministers, his position is not yet under threat.
Ideally, most Fianna Fáil backbenchers would head to the other side of the Dáil chamber and hand power to Fine Gael and Labour if they could do so without an election, thus saving their seats in the process.
Indeed, the theory is put forward by some as a live strategy, though it would not happen because Fine Gael and Labour would never allow it and could not rule with such numbers, even if they decided to try.
Ministers came out en masse over the weekend to declare Fianna Fáil had been punished by the electorate for hard, but necessary, decisions.
Their sin has been in their failure to communicate, they claimed.
Most Fianna Fáil TDs know that a quick run to the country would ensure the party would have difficulty holding a seat in every constituency in the country, particularly because of the support for left-leaning Independents.
However, councillors and the party ranks will now demand action from Cowen – first, in dealing with the leader’s woeful failure to communicate with the public at large since his ascent to power.
Cowen, a superb orator, is an appalling communicator who despises presentation, and has been often advised that he needs to speak more clearly, more vibrantly and not like a small-town solicitor reading out a will.
Privately, some Fianna Fáil TDs said a Cabinet reshuffle must now be made over the summer, even though Cowen hinted strongly in his final pre-election press conference that he is not minded to make changes.
Such calls, even if made privately, can be easily translated: Cowen must remove Mary Coughlan as Tánaiste and as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if the Government’s image is to change.
“Coughlan is clueless and inept. You just don’t let her out. You don’t want her on the door for fear of what she might say. When did you see her out during the campaign?” one Dublin councillor fumed yesterday.
The difficulty is Cowen, who values loyalty and tends to return it. In the face of imminent turbulence, the worst of all worlds for Fianna Fáil would be a reshuffle that did not go far enough, leaving Coughlan and some others in their places.