Frances may be on last lap but she often led the way

THE astonishing pace of the current political crisis has taken everyone by surprise, not least its central figure, former justice minister Frances Fitzgerald.

Only a few days ago the Tánaiste was in the US on a busy schedule of events. She opened a Women in Leadership conference in New York, delivering a TedTalk on inclusion in the JFK library in Boston and pressed the flesh of leading lights of the Irish-American community.

Last weekend she hosted the Fine Gael Annual Ladies lunch in the InterContinental hotel in Ballsbridge in Dublin, posing for photographs with guest of honour Norah Casey and the Taoiseach’s mother Miriam and sister Sonia.

If she had planned a final lap of honour, she couldn’t have arranged a better nod to her work advancing equality and as a role model for women in politics.

She came to prominence through the women’s movement, catching Garret FitzGerald’s eye in the late Eighties as chairwoman of the National Women’s Council.

Despite the vicissitudes of her political career, she never gave up and she was one of the handful of women who kept the female flag flying in Leinster House over the years.

Recently, she said that retirement was not in her nature and that she didn’t believe in it.

Aged 67, she has no plans to bow out, although her colleagues might now beg to differ. They may entreat her to take one for the team, so to speak, and save the country from a Christmas election.

Nobody wants to resign with charges of incompetence or lack of credibility ringing in their ears, but politics is a cruel mistress. Ask Alan Shatter. The Tánaiste should dig in her heels.