Recess will bring little respite for canny politicians

Our attention should have been on the North this week and in the order of things it should have been our priority.

Our attention should have been on the North this week and in the order of things it should have been our priority.

The Good Friday agreement is not just fraying at the edges: it's imploding from within. Instead of reconciliation we see a society more divided than ever; we see a political centre weaker and less fashionable than ever before; we see an IRA with no notion of decommissioning; we see loyalists who don't need Johnny Adair to continue their murder and intimidation.

Nobody is prepared to say out loud that the agreement is failing. Nobody can afford to, and there is all-party support for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair as they face yet another wearying spate of crisis talks. What more is there to say? Yet say it they must, but nobody is investing too much hope and few want to contemplate the consequences of failure.

Perhaps it's for this very reason. The incapacity and the unwillingness to contemplate what may happen, combined with an inability to shape events, have ensured the North featured so little in this week's deliberations. As a result most of the action took place within the comfort zone of domestic politics. It could be called denial. Or maybe helplessness.

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Whatever about the weather, as far as politics is concerned it's going to be a long and hot summer. The impending general election, even if it is as far as nine months away, is concentrating minds greatly.

Since no party is in pole position, we all have a great deal to play for.

There was a certain air of unreality about the place this week. The Government was on the ropes after Nice and South Tipperary, but there was never any sense of a real threat to its position in the House. The Independent support is as solid as a rock, but nonetheless the Government greeted the summer recess with visible relief.

The week was not as tetchy or bad-tempered as Drapier anticipated. In a way the South Tipp by-election drew the sting and the good-humoured reception of Tom Hayes on Tuesday set the tone for the rest of the week. Tom has the cut of a man who is here to stay, and the fact that he had become so widely liked during his four years in the Seanad took any sharpness there might have been out of his introduction.

It was a good moment for Michael Noonan. His understated approach did not hide the relief and his hope that he has put his run of bad luck behind him and can now get on with the real business. He could hardly have asked for a better platform than that which Tom Hayes and the voters of South Tipperary gave him.

Ruairi Quinn has no such comfort in facing into his pre-campaign. Denis Landy swept up the votes from Carrick-on-Suir, but elsewhere the Labour vote disappeared like melting snow in a constituency with a long Labour tradition, indeed the very constituency in which the party was founded all those years ago.

Bertie Ahern must also be wondering what he has to do to win a by-election. One by-election defeat, even two, can be explained as the result of particular circumstances or bad luck. But six in a row, even if only one was a sitting Fianna Fail seat? That takes some explaining.

The one common factor was that the once invincible Fianna Fail machine was a pale shadow of its former self in all of these campaigns, and the other was that the soaring popularity of the party leader never translated into votes.

It is factors like these which make any general election prediction so hazardous. The simple fact is that no one knows how a general election today would turn out. The only certainty is that no party would get an overall majority.

After that anything is possible; possible but not necessarily inevitable.

There is no inevitability, for example, that we will have an avalanche of independents or single-issue TDs, or that Sinn Fein will make as big an impact as some are predicting.

As Drapier said last week, those TDs and senators who have done their work and stayed close to their constituents will be re-elected and there are more of those in most parties than many realise or give credit for.

In addition, a general election will focus many minds on the national issues. It always does and usually in a fairminded way. And while health looks like being the big issue, others can appear out of nowhere with devastating effect.

Europe, for example, will be a bigger issue than most would have expected even a few weeks ago. And Drapier still believes sleaze and the Bertie Bowl will be bigger factors than appears at present.

What Drapier is saying is that there are sufficient people still waiting to be persuaded. Enough to make it worth all our whiles trying to do so in earnest over the coming months.

Last year the Government was reeling at this stage. Yet by October it was flying high, because it used the recess well. Much of what happened was stage-managed and orchestrated, stories were spun and the image came across of a hard-working administration handing out one bit of good news after another.

Somehow it didn't matter how it was done: all that mattered was the result, and Drapier has no doubt that last year's blueprint is being dusted off.

The recess can be a nightmare for an opposition seeking to make an impression. There is no Dail chamber in which to question the government and target the weaker links. There is no good news to impart, no largesse to disperse.

It's a question of trying to grab attention in an increasingly crowded news calendar, trying to engage the attention of people who are already fully occupied with their own affairs and interests.

But that is the size of the task facing Michael Noonan and Ruairi Quinn this summer. Drapier suspects constituency visits, local media events and quiet ground hurling will be the approach. It's a time to hone the general election message and iron out those local problems which are capable of being resolved.

In one respect they are luckier than the Opposition leaders were a year ago. The Government has taken a heavy pounding over the past few weeks, especially on health issues and on the leadership question, and Drapier has no doubt some lasting damage has been done, especially to the confidence of people who otherwise should be walking on water.

Once mistakes start they generally continue and once ministers start making solo runs and getting away with it, it is hard to expect backbenchers not to do likewise. We may expect a few spectaculars in that department over the summer.

There is much to reflect on, and not least the way in which we push so much legislation through at the end of the year. One way or other few if any of us will be putting up the Gone Fishin' sign just yet.