Far more damaging for the Soldiers of Destiny was the fall-out from the Hugh O Flaherty affair. Debates might rage as to whether there were real grounds for the public discontent over the issue: what is certain is that the perceived shiftiness of Bertie, Charlie McCreevy et al sat uneasily with Fianna Fail s claims that its past was another country.
FF can take heart from the fact that the economy continues to thrive, thus giving the Minister for Finance room for Santa Claus-like largesse while still preserving a budget surplus. And, if Bill Clinton s famous rule about what matters to the voters ( It s the economy, stupid! ) is proved right here, Bertie will stay in government, possibly with an increased majority, come the next general election.
That increased majority probably won t come from gains by Fianna Fail, though. Instead, it seems more likely that the next election could herald a FF-Labour coalition. If that occurred it would be difficult to see where the PD s could go, other than the wilderness. Mary Harney s party has struggled for most of the year their morale has never recovered from the drubbing at the polls last time around, while the O Flaherty controversy and their leader s ill-advised comments about Charles Haughey led to murmurings about Harney s capabilities. Things weren t improved by the will-he-won t-he shenanigans over Michael McDowell s rejoining the party. November provided a small fillip, though deregulation of taxis was seen by some within the party as an issue on which they could re-establish their radical, free-market credentials.
There were few things which really rocked the boat for the other parties. Fine Gael appeared to slumber much of the time, with John Bruton s attempts to (s)nail Bertie and Fianna Fail remaining ineffective. Mind you, the challenge to his leadership was hardly a model of ruthlessness either. Badly planned, clumsily argued and a bit too gentlemanly for its own good, Austin Deasy s heave ended up as a barely perceptible nudge. But the issue of the leadership hasn t died away: all eyes are still on Michael Noonan, whose support for Bruton has at times seemed less than full-blooded.
For Labour, it seemed a more confident case of steady as she goes . The party seems to have bounced back from the humiliation of 97. An unusually strident attack on the Taoiseach by Ruairi Quinn in the autumn suggested that an FF-Lab coalition is not the only option. If the numbers add up, we could be returning to Rainbow-land. It seems, though that Labour are odds-on to return to government in some form in the near-future.
Sinn Fein s support continues to rise in the 26 counties, bolstered by the fact that the hard left field is now theirs alone to exploit. Some of the party s most optimistic forecasts about the number of seats they will hold in the next Dail need to be looked at skeptically, but they will almost certainly increase their representation. The year also saw Gerry Adams regularly amuse himself and the party s base by reiterating that it was not a question of whether FF would be prepared to join with SF in a future coalition, but whether the Shinners would be willing to get into bed with Bertie and co.
The independents again got more than their share of publicity. Most ominously, they seem to have had a disproportionate influence on putting abortion back onto the agenda, with the intention of reverting back to an even more conservative position than is currently in place. Here we go again