Farming and tourism are not the only areas severely hit by foot-and-mouth disease. Politics has been affected too and while the continuing crisis could be said to have benefited the Government, it has not been good for the Opposition.
It has helped the FF/PD coalition by causing the indefinite postponement, if not eventual abandonment, of the Tipp South by-election, which means the Opposition is down a seat. FG had been expected to hold it.
While Fianna Fail and Labour have postponed their annual conferences until the autumn, Fine Gael held a small and less-than-successful event in Dublin. In addition, the census has been put off for a year, the referendums have been put back and if things get worse on the FMD front, they could be delayed further. The emergency facing the country has taken the heat out of politics and all talk of an early election has vanished.
One reason for the cooling of the political temperature has been the absence of opinion polls. The last Irish Times/MRBI poll was in January and in the normal course of events, the next one, given there are about six a year, should have appeared by now. FMD means it has been postponed indefinitely. Pollsters told Quidnunc that State-wide political polling, apart from occasional urban-only polls, had been halted since the crisis began. "We can't guarantee our farming quotas will be filled," said a practitioner. "None of the agencies are interviewing in the farming community. There is some urban constituency polling but that's all." Outside politics, consumer surveys, focus groups and telephone polling are continuing.
Apart from the state of the parties and the normal beauty contest between the leaders, the issues of the day would be on the pollsters' questionnaires. What does the country think of the Bertie Bowl, of the GAA and the £60 million for the association, of Beverley Cooper-Flynn, of the current budgetary changes and of how the Government is handling the dreaded foot and mouth? We may never know. No accurate poll is possible until the Republic gets the all-clear.
Of course, things are different in the North and in Britain. There, it is full steam ahead for the local, and almost definitely, Westminster elections on June 7th.