There was surprise in political circles when just before Christmas it was announced that Jim Miley was leaving his post as general secretary of Fine Gael to take the late Noel Carroll's job as chief executive of Dublin Chamber of Commerce. And he not even a Dub, but a Roscommon man. He left this weekend, following nearly four years in Mount Street, just before the vital local and Euro elections in June. But there are no hard feelings and he says everything will be ready to roll for the new man, Tom Curran who moves in on April 19th.
The 500 candidates for the local elections will be almost in place and the Euro conventions completed. Indeed at one stage during the last couple of months Miley said it looked as if the political tension would ensure he was still in situ for a general election.
Miley hadn't planned to go now, he said, as he wanted to see the elections through, but when an opportunity arises you take it because it won't happen again. Asked for the high and low points of his four years running Fine Gael, Miley said they both occurred on the same day, at the election count on June 7th, 1997 when the party gained nine seats but failed to get back into power. His entire first two years had been focused on that election, but FG's Rainbow partners didn't get enough seats to hold on in government.
What will he miss? "Elections. I will not miss the phone calls at 6.45 a.m. on a Sunday. But elections are the biggest excitement, parties revolve round them and if you get that right everything else falls into place."
Now he has to give it all up, even to the extent of resigning his party membership. But he feels he is leaving the party in pretty good shape.