FIANNA FÁIL's nightmare continues with no indication that public support for the party has bottomed out, or that any recovery in the party's fortunes is imminent. In the two weeks since the last Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll, Fianna Fáil had hoped for a modest bounce as campaigning for the local and European elections and the Dublin byelections intensified. But with 20 per cent support, and again showing a marginal decline, Fianna Fáil remains becalmed in the polls.
Its leader fares little better. One in five people is now satisfied with Brian Cowen’s performance as Taoiseach – a slight improvement. For Mr Cowen, his Government and his party, the poll tidings are uniformly bad.
The Government's handling of the child abuse issue would seem to have won it few public plaudits in the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll which was conducted at the height of the controversy over the full implications of the Ryan report. The inept negotiations in 2002 with the religious congregations on compensation payments to abuse victims and the Government's hesitant and confused response over many days may have contributed to today's findings.
With the elections a week away, the challenge facing Fianna Fáil is how best to rally its shrinking support. But with more than half of party supporters (54 per cent) dissatisfied with the Government’s performance, the mood of disenchantment may take its toll on party turnout, as some choose to abstain. The timing of the April budget measures, with the doubling of both the income and health levies being felt in the pay packets of thousands of voters this week, is unlikely to provide an electoral bounce in the run-up to polling day.
The Opposition parties can take more consolation from the poll results than either Fianna Fáil or the Green Party. Support for Fine Gael, at 36 per cent, has dipped marginally, with Labour, at 23 per cent and rising, the main beneficiary. Indeed, Labour may well have benefited from party leader Eamon Gilmore's decision to rule out any coalition arrangement with Fianna Fáil after the next election following our last poll. In three successive Irish Times/TNS mrbi polls since February, public support for Fine Gael and Labour has consolidated at well over 50 per cent. This theoretical support base provides a solid foundation on which to offer the electorate an alternative government at the next election.
Two weeks ago the Green Party, in the middle of the election campaign, called for a review of the programme for government. It was seen as a political gambit designed to distance the Greens from their Coalition partners in electoral terms. The move has had little impact on party support, which stands unchanged at 3 per cent. The Green Party finds itself in a somewhat unusual position: as a minority party in Government, but one in which only 5 per cent of its own supporters say they are satisfied. Elections serve to concentrate the mind of both the candidates and the voting public. In the seven days to polling next Friday, there is much to focus on.