Fine Gael's director of elections, Frank Flannery, is to take over a new role as the party's head of organisation and strategy following a shake-up ordered by the party leader, Enda Kenny.
Carlow/Kilkenny TD Phil Hogan, who spearheaded candidate selection for the last general election, is to lose his role as director of organisation in the party under the reforms.
"He will not be director of organisation. He is an elected member from Kilkenny. He has finished his remit on organisation, which he had for five years," Mr Kenny told The Irish Times.
Mr Flannery will also command the party's existing regional directors and its Dublin administration, Mr Kenny said in Galway at the end of a two-day Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting.
"I am now going to put all those under the office of electoral strategy and organisation, so that we get the very best practice in all of our constituencies and districts," Mr Kenny said.
"There is a great difference between the capacity of some of our public representatives and the way that they do business, as distinct from others. You can't have a set system for everybody, because personality always plays a big part in politics, and some people do their business very differently from others.
"This will give us a far more streamlined, far more competent, professional business. And we have to do that if we are going to win on organisation."
Fine Gael is to set up four commissions in coming weeks to draw up new policies on the green economy, public services, trust in politics, and families and communities.
"We hope to draw on a far greater network from people who have ideas," Mr Kenny continued. "We are moving away from the idea that party policy came from a single person, whether they came from the front bench or wherever."
Fine Gael would have to develop sharply different - but credible - policies from Fianna Fáil, because the next election would be fought as a straight contest between the two, the Fine Gael leader predicted.
"The differentiation of policy is critical, but globalisation has meant that you are now talking about centrist parties in a centrist country with centrist policies, and sometimes it is difficult to get differentiation. But there are areas in reform of the public services and how you deal with the economy that would clearly differentiate us from others."
Fine Gael's greater Dáil strength and the decline in support for Sinn Féin and Independents would allow the party a clearer voice in the new Dáil, he argued. "You are not going to have the political attack broken up by other smaller groups. We intend to use that resource very clearly and very politically to hold the Government really to account.
"A lot of people said to me before the election that it is going to be really difficult for you to make it from 31. That was a question people had, a perfectly legitimate question. Now, at 51, we have a much stronger platform."
