Nostalgia claws at the heart of weary party faithful as events take their toll

Fianna Fáil is looking in need of resuscitation at an uncommonly early stage in the game

“CLUBBED SEALS,” murmured a loiterer, observing the demeanour of the FFers assembling around the lobby at the City West Hotel.

Sure enough, the party was looking in need of resuscitation at an uncommonly early stage in the game.

No doubt the long drive to west Dublin, the Friday evening traffic, and the historically abysmal polls had all taken their toll.

Even Brian Cowen’s pale, make up-free features chimed with the mood. Ministers circulated, allowing the young pups to touch the robe, but the big beasts looked more like needy spaniels anticipating a slap.

Mary Coughlan said bleakly that she had “given away” 132 jobs in Shannon before lunch and no one wanted to know.

A bunch of delegates stood around forlornly, giving out about the Opposition, the bankers and the woman garda protester who complained she was losing €75 a week in the pension levy.

“She’d have to be making €85,000 a year to be losing that much,” said one resentfully.

Nostalgia clawed at the FF heart and recrimination simmered. “There’s less activity in south Galway, I’ll tell you that,” said a veteran campaigner balefully. “There’s fierce disillusionment all right. The question is where will it end,” said another.

“There’s definitely a sense that the Government should have done an awful lot more,” said Séamus Kilgallin, a Sligo councillor, and one of the few brave boyos prepared to hand out his calling card with the recrimination.

“Income tax should have gone up to 48 per cent last October.”

His companion interjected: “There should have been a 60 per cent bracket and then you’d have got those f***kers getting the €2 million a year.”

Séamus stuck to his point. “All the bad stuff is coming in drip, drip, drip . . . I’m disappointed in the leadership that they didn’t tell us how bad it was.”

So why didn’t they? “I don’t know. We don’t know what they’re at – whether it’s that they presided over a bad situation or what . . . It worries me.

“And another thing – I think it’s a bit rich of McCreevy to say the banks contributed to the bubble. What was he doing as Minister for Finance that he didn’t call them in and slow down the flow of money?”

Is this a call for change, Séamus? “To be honest, we’re hoping that they’re working on something.”

The Taoiseach’s 15-minute foreword – never meant to be anything more than a bit of housekeeping, to be fair – offered little in the way of a tonic. The standing ovation of welcome was real but it was the unspontaneous, script-reading Brian Cowen who turned up, not the one who let fly ex-tempore at the Four Seasons and was hero for a day. One of the few deviations was a sugar lump offered to the Independents, among the scripted bouquets to the Greens and the PDs.

The high point of the evening was when Ciarán of Ógra Fianna Fáil offered The Irish Times a back rub with any FF teddy bear purchase (a tenner to you and plenty in stock), or a fiver for a mug, if that wasn’t too close to the bone.

Two long days and nights stretch ahead.

A few barrels of spirits stirred into the recrimination, served with ice and slice, might yet make for a volatile mix.