In the early years of this decade, Fianna Fáil dug itself into a hole that it is has found difficult to get out of, writes Garret FitzGerald.
By lashing out in its two election budgets of 2000 and 2001 on largely unproductive public spending, then trying to undo the consequent damage by equally ill-judged spending cuts immediately after the 2002 election, Charlie McCreevy lost Fianna Fáil the confidence of the electorate.
Last June that cost it much of its political base at local authority level.
Fianna Fáil thus lost the advantage that might have accrued to it from the improvements in public and social services which might have been secured by carrying through more targeted and policy-driven spending policies at a more even tempo during the past four years.
The time that remains to recover from McCreevy's ham-fisted attempt at a major political confidence trick may not be long enough for the party to retrieve all this lost ground before the next election, although the reshuffle, involving McCreevy's departure to Brussels, has given it an initial boost, as is clear from yesterday's Irish Times poll.
The odds are in fact strongly against Fianna Fáil winning as many seats in the next election as it secured in 2002.
First of all, while, as yesterday's poll also suggests, Fine Gael would be unwise to count on getting as many votes in a general election as it secured in the June local election, that party is certainly likely to gain some extra votes vis-à-vis its poor 2002 general election performance.
As I pointed out in this column some weeks ago, even a modest recovery in the Fine Gael vote will serve to undo some or all of the unprecedented reversal of its normal seat-bonus - i.e. the excess of its share of seats over its share of votes - which in 2002 cost it 12 more seats than were warranted by the actual drop in its vote in that election.
Moreover, it is clear that Sinn Féin will also gain some seats, mainly at the expense of Fianna Fáil. At this stage that party already seems sure of eight seats as against its present five TDs in the Dáil and, when it finally abandons violence and decommissions its arms and explosives, it is likely to secure several more.
However, because of the way its vote is concentrated in a small number of areas, its share of seats will certainly be much lower than its share of votes.
(It should perhaps be added that polls now tend to exaggerate Sinn Féin's performance, for something like one-fifth of 11-12 per cent who had told pollsters they would vote for it had clearly changed their minds by the time they actually entered their polling station.)
So, no matter what ground Fianna Fáil may recover in the next couple of years, it is as near a certainty as anything ever is in politics that it will come back after the next election with fewer seats than it has today.
Of course, that of itself would not necessarily mean that there must be a change of government.
With the likelihood that some 25 Dáil seats will be held by parties or individuals who have never had any role in government and could jump either way when it comes to choosing a taoiseach in Dáil Éireann after the general election, the composition of the next government is quite simply unknowable at this stage.
What is abundantly clear, however, is that all this poses a serious issue for the Progressive Democrats. The odds are that after the next election, Sinn Féin will be a larger party than the Progressive Democrats, even in the unlikely event that the latter retains all eight seats that by a series of flukes it won in 2002.
Because it is clear that the PDs will not join or even vote for a Fianna Fáil government dependent on Sinn Féin support, Fianna Fáil is likely to be forced to choose between these two parties and is most unlikely to have the luxury of choosing to rely on the support of the smaller of the two.
Mary Harney and Michael McDowell must be able to see this scenario as clearly as I can and in this situation they will have to consider the wisdom of continuing to tie their fortunes to Fianna Fáil right up to mid-2007.
If they decide to withdraw that support, they might well decide to make their break for freedom long enough before that date to ensure that Fianna Fáil does not get the bonus from the Special Saving Incentive Accounts - SSIA - in the election that follows.
The truth is that because of this situation, Fianna Fáil is not in full control of the election timetable and cannot be sure that it will be able to postpone a general election until after April 2007, so as to secure the benefits of that SSIA bonanza.
True, if the PDs deserted it, Fianna Fáil might then try to cobble together an alternative majority, but would Independents or Sinn Féin see any advantage in propping up Fianna Fáil at such a late stage? Even if they did, would such a late-devised lame-duck government be likely to enter an election campaign in a good enough shape to win?
No, the truth is that Fianna Fáil is now at the mercy of the PDs, whose best hope of participating in the next government could be to start playing down their right-wing ideology and then to ensure they have credible grounds for abandoning Fianna Fáil in a year or two, with a view to joining an alternative Fine Gael-Labour-Green government after the election.
Would these parties be likely to welcome the support of a less right-wing Progressive Democrats party?
Some of them might not actually welcome such support but if, as is likely to be the case, they needed these votes to form a government, they would accept it.
In the debate on the reshuffle, Mary Harney was already starting to shift her party's ideological stance away from the right. While, no doubt, she genuinely believes that she can make something of the health portfolio, by taking it on she has also positioned herself well for such a break should this seem to be in her party's interest.
Such a break could, for example, come in response to Fianna Fáil backbench opposition to the implementation of the Hanly report, a move that would pose no problems for at least six of her eight TDs who represent Dublin, Galway and Limerick.