Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte has poured scorn on a leading trade union leader who criticised his electoral strategy, calling him a "hurler on the ditch" whose "nonsense" views "deserve to be ignored".
In a strong critique of the regional secretary of the ATGWU, Mick O'Reilly, Mr Rabbitte said yesterday that contrary to Mr O'Reilly's argument, the recent Kildare North and Meath byelections did not prove whether it was better for Labour to face the next election in alliance with Fine Gael or as a independent party.
Mr Rabbitte said that his party's national conference in Tralee in May would discuss this issue. And it should be active, campaigning party members who would determine the issue, "not pavilion members willing to misrepresent the outcome of byelections to make an old political point".
Mr Rabbitte was responding to a statement last week from Mr O'Reilly who maintained that a pre-election pact with Fine Gael would only benefit that party while leaving Labour as also-rans. He maintained that Labour's fourth place in the two byelections was "not good enough" and said the strategy of forming a pre-election pact with Fine Gael should be reconsidered. Mr O'Reilly has been a long-time critic of Labour coalition deals.
Mr Rabbitte derided Mr O'Reilly as "a pavilion member" of his party, saying he had not encountered him since he became party leader. "Nor did I encounter him while canvassing in the housing estates of Ashbourne and Ratoath or in Sallins or Kilcock.
"However, I don't dispute that he holds the views reported because I have on a dozen occasions in my adult lifetime heard Mick O'Reilly make the same speech." Mr Rabbitte said he respected the genuinely held view of many committed Labour Party members who argued "that Labour should fight the election as an independent party and, after the election, form a coalition with whomsoever to implement as much of Labour policy as possible".
He said this had been the strategy in the 2002 general election, but in the event Labour was "surplus to requirements when it came to forming a government.
"The alternate view which I have tried to articulate is that after 20 years (with a very brief interruption) of Fianna Fáil in government, the Irish people are entitled to a choice. Provided that Labour's policy goals are represented in the programme of an alternative government to the extent that our members would approve, then we should not shirk from campaigning for additional Labour TDs in that context," he said.
He said neither of these alternative approaches could be shown to be superior by reference to the outcome of the recent byelections. "It is, however, a fact that while Fine Gael increased its vote in Meath, the Labour candidate almost trebled the Labour vote and attracted more than 17 per cent of the vote in what will be the new Meath East constituency.
"I am at a loss to understand how Mick O'Reilly can argue that because Dominic Hannigan's vote significantly transferred to Fine Gael, that fact somehow diminished the Labour performance."
He said Labour's drop from 21 per cent to 18 per cent in Kildare North was not due to Fianna Fáil (who lost more than 18 points) or Fine Gael (who gained just half of 1 per cent) but because of the 62 per cent vote in Leixlip town for Catherine Murphy - a strong independent who until recently was a Labour councillor.
"I could understand Mick O'Reilly querying how the Labour Party managed to lose a public representative of Catherine Murphy's calibre," Mr Rabbitte went on.
"However, to suggest that Labour failed to win the seat because of a transfer pact with Fine Gael is transparent nonsense."
He said he was not in favour of changing government for the sake of changing government. The sole purpose of putting Labour in government was to build a fair society.