14 years in power at next election means McHugh is just the start of a FG exodus

AS THE terrible year of 2010 turned into 2011, eyewitnesses in Government Buildings described conditions as resembling Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Yet on the January day after he had seen off a confidence challenge then-Taoiseach Brian Cowen was in good form. In the ministerial corridor, along from the Taoiseach’s office in Government Buildings, nobody else was reassured by the temporary stay.

‘All I could hear was shredding going on, right along the bloody corridor, the ministerial corridor,’ said minister Pat Carey. Éamon Ó Cuív, who was in the office next door, said to Carey, ‘This is the end’.

Enterprise minister Billy Kelleher heard rumours that Cowen intended a reshuffle. He’d expressed no confidence in Cowen, and this plan to appoint new ministers was a bridge too far. Kelleher entered the Taoiseach’s office at 5pm and ‘handed him my resignation [letter]’. Cowen responded: ‘Don’t do it, Billy, I won’t accept it. Give me 24 hours. Don’t do it now. Christ, the whole thing is under huge pressure.’

Kelleher bumped into Cowen a while later in the Dáil bar. They had a pint and the resignation wasn’t mentioned, then or ever again. That night Cowen started the reshuffle of a Cabinet that had only weeks to survive anyway.

The Green Party said ‘no’ and the coalition government fell apart.

THESE ministers described the febrile events to Daniel McConnell and me for our book, Hell At The Gates, about that government. I recall vividly, four years after the reshuffle, Cowen laughing wryly in a Tullamore hotel at the Greens’ opposition. He told me that he asked John Gormley, incredulously, ‘“What’s the issue here?” I couldn’t understand what they [the Greens] were doing.’

Even now, the astounding colour amid the dark parliamentary manoeuvring makes us overlook prosaic actions that led to all this. Correctly foreseeing that a traumatic election was looming, where most of them would lose their seats, many long-serving ministers decided to get out.

Cabinet ministers Mary Harney, Noel Dempsey, Dermot Ahern, Tony Killeen and Batt O’Keeffe had informed Cowen that they intended to retire. Martin Cullen had retired the previous year. Cowen’s ship was rapidly leaking.

Of crucial importance was that they were all entitled to draw their pensions. Politics was once supposed to be a short career and pensions could be drawn early. Rules have changed. But still, now, if you were elected before 2003 and if you’re 50, you can retire and start drawing your pension immediately. If you were elected after that year, you have to wait, like us all, until you are 66 to start picking up the pension.

By January 2011 Fianna Fáil (and Mary Harney) had been in power for nearly 14 years. They were being led by a once formidable and popular leader, who had faded. Many had served and achieved personal goals. They were facing traumatic and probably futile encounters with the electorate on the campaign trail. They would either lose their seats or face a long time in opposition.

I thought back to 2011 this week when former education minister Joe McHugh gave notice of his intention not to stand for re-election. He was 50 last July and he was elected to the Seanad in September 2002, prior to the vital deadline that allows him to start drawing down the pension.

Indeed, by September of this year he will have served 20 years in the Oireachtas, meaning he can pick up a healthy pension and still start a new career. Now I can’t see into McHugh’s thoughts, but there is precedent.

If you look further into the heart of the Fine Gael parliamentary party it becomes very interesting. Of the 35 TDs, 10 others are, or soon will be, in the same position as McHugh.

Bernard Durkan, 77, was first elected to the Oireachtas 41 years ago; Frank Feighan, 59, was first elected in 2002; Michael Ring, 68 – 1997; Michael Creed, 58 – 1989;

David Stanton, 65 – 1997; Richard Bruton, 69 – 1981; Charlie Flanagan, 65 – 1987 and Fergus O’Dowd, Louth, 73 – 1997. Paul Kehoe, Wexford, was first elected in 2002 and will be 50 next year. Simon Coveney, first elected in 1998, will be 50 this year.

If you count McHugh that means 11 Fine Gael TDs, almost a third of the party’s Dail contingent, could decide not to stand in the next general election and start drawing their pension. Unless something incredible happens (not unheard of in politics) the next election will not be held until March 2025.

WHEN you process that date you will see there is a further fascinating parallel with the Fianna Fáil administration that shuddered to a halt in 2011. Fine Gael will have been in power for an unbroken period of 14 years, the exact duration of that Fianna Fáil iteration.

Leo Varadkar will, like Cowen, have been Taoiseach without ever winning a general election. There are other similarities between the two men. Both were outstanding ministers but disappointed in the top job. Varadkar and Cowen share soaring intellects, but failed in the mundanities of party man management. Cowen, clearly, was so engrossed in fighting a historically catastrophic economic crash that he had little time or energy for electoral preparation or candidate selection. Nevertheless, he was the leader and he was responsible for a general election fiasco from which Fianna Fáil has not recovered. Varadkar told Fine Gael colleagues that they should oust predecessor Enda Kenny because, as a young, vibrant and popular leader, he would not only save their seats but lead them to bright sunlit uplands.

In his only electoral outing – 2020 – he secured 15 fewer seats than Kenny’s last election. Varadkar took 35 seats, 41 fewer than Kenny’s high of 76 in that 2011 election.

The narratives of a surging Sinn Féin, and an eternal internecine war in Fianna Fáil, are attractive ones when it comes to foreshadowing the result of the next general election. But many political veterans tell me that the most influential factors will be these: by 2025 Fianna Fáil will have been in power just five years and Fine Gael 14 years. Very rarely in our 100-year history has a party had an unbroken 14-year tenure in government. And when it has it has been ousted. Never has it happened Fine Gael before and we are in uncharted waters. But precedent has shown that the people, the electorate, get tired of you. Varadkar will have been in power for all of those 14 years. Yes, it is possible that this unique and brilliant politician can turn it all around, and pull off one of the great feats in Irish politics. He could revive a tired, moribund and directionless party and lead it to an astounding election victory and return to power. But it is very unlikely.

Fine Gael is steadily falling in popularity, recent polls have it at 19%. TDs tell me the party organisation is in bad shape and morale in the parliamentary party is low. But again, the salient fact is the length of its occupancy of office. Virtually all the parliamentary party has served in ministerial office and/or committee chair positions.

Fianna Fáil parliamentarians have things to achieve, new lands to discover and pensions to clock up. Sinn Féin has never experienced power in our State and has left wing, populist ideas and policies it wants to put into action.

And what of Leo? He, as he was elected in 2007, cannot collect the Oireachtas pension. But relatively young, glamorous and internationally known he would be a catch for any NGO or private company. Those who saw him gazing with wonder at the Apple and Google HQs on a recent visit to Silicon Valley said he looked like a man come home.

But what could the exit plan possibly be?

His legacy would be forever tarnished if he left Fine Gael before what is almost certain to be a tough and personally bruising election. Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, he might have no choice but to fight on to glorious defeat.