Since 2011 Micheál Martin has shaped Fianna Fáil more than any other individual.
While most acknowledge his relentless work ethic while rebuilding a party in danger of collapse, not every supporter is happy with where he has steered Fianna Fáil.
He has done much to improve Fianna Fáil’s perceived image of being cute hoors who were fond of the odd brown envelope. However, he has also alienated many grassroots supporters. They were particularly baffled by his disastrously out-of-touch support for the 2024 Family and Care referendums.
His approach to the presidential election has also exposed his distance from his parliamentary party. He seemed disinclined to have Fianna Fáil contest the election at all. However, the symbolic nature of the office remains important, even if securing it has recently resembled the Hunger Games more than an electoral process.
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A presidential election allows individuals and parties to interrogate their values and present them to the public.
Perhaps Fianna Fáil no longer really knows what it stands for.
It is not as if there was any scarcity of shy but willing candidates, including Martin’s former close ally, Billy Kelleher. Bertie Ahern, Mary Hanafin and Éamon Ó Cuív, although very different characters, seemed to inspire the same terror as the Ghost of Christmas Past, causing Martin to cry out like Ebenezer Scrooge, “Leave me! ... Haunt me no longer!”
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Martin’s reasons for opposing Ahern’s run have been well-rehearsed. He has no desire to remind the electorate of being central to Ahern’s team as the economy went into catastrophic meltdown.
Hanafin probably lost her chance of a nomination in 2014. She defied instructions to withdraw her candidacy in the local elections in the so-called Battle of Blackrock.
Despite winning with relative ease, Hanafin stood in the way of Martin’s preferred type of candidate, a young woman with impeccable liberal credentials, Kate Feeney. (She also got elected.)
Éamon Ó Cuív is a distinct case. He epitomises the stark change in the values of Fianna Fáil since 2011. Although reared in Dublin, his focus has been on community capacity-building, particularly in rural areas, ever since he became the manager of a Gaeltacht development co-operative in Corr na Móna.
He has always fought for a State responsive to its people, rather than an impenetrable bureaucracy. He has remained a constitutional nationalist and passionate advocate for the Irish language. He is the antithesis of a finger up to the wind politician and has clashed with Martin on everything from going into Coalition to the Fiscal Compact treaty.
For some, he is the great lost leader who could have upheld the better instincts of Fianna Fáil, the localist – as opposed to clientelist – tradition that simply aimed to ensure everyone had a chance of a decent life.
Ó Cuív stubbornly plods on with unpopular causes, like visiting republican prisoners in Maghaberry, because he cares about moving them towards useful lives, not how it plays as PR.
At the moment Heather Humphreys appears to be the front-runner. Despite Martin’s relentless focus on bringing women into politics, why does he judge Fianna Fáil incapable of fielding a seasoned female politician who would appeal in the same way to middle Ireland?
Although strong, capable, articulate and intelligent women, neither Deirdre Heenan nor Siofra O’Leary has political experience or name recognition. (I should disclose that I remember O’Leary fondly as a competent and well-liked head girl in the school where I taught.)
Fianna Fáil’s last female presidential candidate was closer to the party’s original values. We have to scrape away the intervening years and remember Mary McAleese before she took to accusing mild-mannered Pope Leo of courting Maga money and Pope Francis of being a “careless pope” and “sometimes narky showman.”
She was allegedly too much the green nationalist, too divisive to be a good president. Instead, she and her husband, Martin, did much to advance peace in Ireland.
Yes, 1997 was a different time, but Fianna Fáil knew the kind of person they wanted, a woman who had contested an election and had a clear vision of the Ireland she wanted to represent.
There is a tendency to dismiss the approach of every president before Mary Robinson as having nothing to offer contemporary Ireland.
The underrated Patrick Hillery, who incidentally laid most of the groundwork for free education before Donogh O’Malley took his solo run, proved his mettle when it was most needed. When Charles Haughey attempted to pressure his former colleague not to dissolve the Dáil to enable Fianna Fáil to form a government without a new election, Hillery sent him packing and protected an Army officer whom Haughey had tried to intimidate. The “mature recollection” of this incident later derailed Brian Lenihan’s attempt at the presidency.
There is something to be said for a president who does not self-identify as an activist. Yet the proposed – at the time of writing – selection of Jim Gavin, while a decent man of solid Clare Fianna Fáil stock, highlights Martin’s obsession with success in Dublin. It also signals that a once-dominant party lacks an electable politician or former politician embodying its core beliefs. What does that say about the party Martin has shaped and his confidence in his colleagues?
