FIANNA FÁIL needs urgent organisational reform and must prove itself as a competent Opposition, according to the party’s former minister of state for science and technology, Conor Lenihan.
The former Dublin South West TD says the party was in “crisis-management mode” even before its general election win in 2007.
“An atmosphere of permanent crisis and controversies pervaded Government Buildings throughout the term of the last government,” he writes in the latest issue of Business Plus magazine.
“The air of crisis in Government Buildings became worse when Brian Cowen became taoiseach in May 2008. Some of this was down to bad luck but a lot of it was self-inflicted damage,” writes Mr Lenihan, who lost his Dáil seat in the recent general election.
Mr Cowen’s elevation was premature: “The plan had been that [Bertie] Ahern would lead Fianna Fáil into the 2009 local elections and take the rap for the bad result by retiring.
“But the personal finances issue didn’t go away and Ahern was rushed off stage prematurely, leaving Cowen with little time to prepare for becoming taoiseach.”
Mr Lenihan writes that, as opposition leader, Enda Kenny “caught the mood” by calling for a cut in TDs’ and ministerial pay, and outraged his own Senators by calling for the abolition of the chamber.
He says that “despite the criticism thrown at Kenny at the time, now nearly everyone is in favour of getting rid of the Senate”.
The social partnership process also damaged the party in government, with “compulsory” membership on State boards and agencies for the social partners.
“In many of the departments where I served, senior civil servants were . . . fearful of taking a decision in case it might be received badly by the social partner nominees on these quangos,” he writes.