The general election saw Fianna Fáil enter a three-party coalition with the Greens on board, writes Stephen Collins, Political Editor.
The year in politics was dominated by the general election and its aftermath, when Bertie Ahern emerged from the contest to secure the Taoiseach's office for a third successive time. The scale of that achievement can be measured by the fact that no other political leader has managed three successive terms for over 60 years.
Ahern did not call the election until the end of April, making the 29th Dáil the longest in the history of the State. Although everybody was expecting the dissolution some time in April, the manner in which the Dáil was dissolved caught everybody by surprise and generated the first big controversy of the campaign.
The Taoiseach travelled to Áras an Uachtaráin very early on the morning of Sunday, April 29th, and asked President McAleese for a dissolution before she flew off to the United States on an official visit. The timing generated a political and media frenzy. The Mahon tribunal was due to sit the following day, with an opening statement about Ahern's personal finances. The newspapers that same weekend carried detailed reports about his complex financial dealings in the early 1990s.
When the Mahon tribunal met the following day, proceedings were adjourned until immediately after the election. The Taoiseach's financial affairs dominated the first week of the campaign and all of the parties found it impossible to get the media to focus on their manifestos.
Fianna Fáil ministers vainly tried to get the focus on to the economy at the daily media campaign briefing. The launch of the Fianna Fáil manifesto was dominated by the Taoiseach's personal finances. Most of the key manifesto pledges - to reduce the two rates of income tax, and cut PRSI in half - had already been announced, and the only significant addition was a pledge to abolish stamp duty on houses for first-time buyers.
Fine Gael got off to a good start, promoting a "Contract for a Better Ireland", which focused on a small number of explicit promises to improve services, particularly the health service. Enda Kenny toured the country in a confident campaign that gave his party organisation the confidence that attaining government was possible. By contrast, Bertie Ahern's performance was uncharacteristically muted during the first half of the campaign as his personal finances dominated the headlines.
Two things then happened that had a profound influence on the final outcome. The first was that the PDs, unnerved by the Taoiseach's problems, threatened to pull out of office in the middle of the campaign. The then party leader, Michael McDowell, pulled back from the brink, but insisted that Ahern would have to make a full statement about his finances before the election.
On the same day that this drama came to a head, the three most powerful Fianna Fáil ministers, Brian Cowen, Micheál Martin and Dermot Ahern, postponed a scheduled press conference and devised a strategy to deal with the problem. At the delayed press conference, Cowen announced that the Taoiseach would make a statement about his finances at some stage in the campaign.
The decision to confront the issue gradually turned the campaign around for Fianna Fáil. As the saturation coverage of Ahern's finances in the media gradually faded, economic issues came to the fore. The party's campaign was also helped by the Taoiseach's high-profile involvement in three major events that reinforced his image as a statesman. The first was the formal establishment of a power-sharing executive at Stormont, the second was a meeting between Ahern and the North's new First Minister, Ian Paisley, at the Battle of the Boyne site, and the third was his address to MPs and members of the House of Lords at Westminster.
The public backing for the Taoiseach by the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, reinforced Ahern's image. The Opposition parties were furious at what they regarded as direct interference in the politics of the Irish Republic by Blair, but they failed to make an issue of it.
With his three big events behind him and the economy beginning to feature as a big issue, the Taoiseach went into his television debate with Enda Kenny in a confident mood a week before the election. He performed well, demonstrating a mastery of detail and throwing doubt on his opponent's ability to run the country. The performance buoyed up Fianna Fáil for the final weekend of the campaign and the party pulled out all the stops in the final days.
THE TELEVISION DEBATE between the four smaller party leaders had an equally dramatic impact. The PD leader, Michael McDowell, took on Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, tackling him about the Northern Bank robbery and republican involvement in Colombia. McDowell also needled Labour leader Pat Rabbitte and Green Party leader Trevor Sargent, warning that any rainbow coalition in which they would be involved would represent "the left, the hard left and the leftovers". A TNS/mrbi poll conducted for The Irish Times after the two debates showed that momentum was shifting to Fianna Fáil in the final days of the campaign. When the votes were counted on May 25th, that indeed proved to be the case. The Fianna Fáil vote was slightly up on 2002 and, while the party's seat total dropped back to 78, it was still in a very strong position to form another government. The PDs were almost wiped out, losing six of their eight seats, with the fallen including party leader Michael McDowell. Mary Harney was forced to take over as acting leader of the party.
The two parties mauled by McDowell in the course of the campaign, Greens and Sinn Féin, also suffered badly. The Greens managed to hold its six seats but only just, and the party vote was considerably lower than the polls had been predicting. For Sinn Féin, the result was worse. Instead of doubling their number of seats to 10, as had been widely predicted, the party came back with one less seat than it had in the 29th Dáil. It was a stunning reverse, particularly as expected seat gains in the two Donegal constituencies and in Dublin were regarded as vital to give the parliamentary party an infusion of young, talented new TDs.
For Fine Gael, it was a case of so near but yet so far. The party had a very good result, gaining 20 seats to come back with 51 TDs. It was the biggest ever seat-gain in a Dáil where the total number of seats had not been increased. The problem was that Labour failed to make any gains and came back with 20 seats, exactly the same number as it won in 2002 when the Ceann Comhairle's position was excluded. The alternative government of Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens had 77 seats, just three less than the 80 won by the outgoing coalition of Fianna Fáil and the PDs. Those three seats were the difference between Government and Opposition.
Although Enda Kenny maintained that a Fine Gael-led government was possible in the aftermath of the election, the combination of parties and Independents required to put an alternative coalition in place was just too flimsy. Bertie Ahern was left in a strong position to form his third government in a row, but he went about it in a remarkable way. While a deal with the PDs and three or four Independents would have been enough to give him a Dáil majority, similar to that he achieved in 1997, he made the surprise move of offering to negotiate with the Greens as well.
After more than a week of talks that involved a walk-out at one stage, the Greens signed up to a Programme for Government with Fianna Fáil and the PDs. The Green negotiators freely accepted that they got very little in policy terms beyond the commitments already made on Green issues in the Fianna Fáil manifesto. They also had to accept the continuation of the PD policy on hospital co-location, which was that party's bottom line in the talks.
What the Greens did get was two Cabinet positions and two junior ministries. The offer of serious jobs in Government swung the deal, which was accepted by an overwhelming vote of a special party conference.
Trevor Sargent resigned as party leader but made it clear that he would be accepting a junior ministry. He was replaced as leader by John Gormley.
WHEN THE DÁIL resumed on June 24th, Bertie Ahern was elected Taoiseach by 89 votes to 75. He was supported by the Greens, the PDs and four Independents, Jackie Healy-Rae, Finian McGrath, Michael Lowry and Beverley Flynn, all of whom announced they had deals with him. It was the first time that Fianna Fáil had entered a three-party coalition and the first time the Greens participated in Government. They got two powerful departments, with John Gormley becoming Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and Eamon Ryan Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.
By underpinning Government with four legs, Ahern seemingly ensured total security by putting himself in the secure position of having a clear majority, if either of his coalition partners decided to withdraw during the lifetime of the 30th Dáil.
Despite not attaining office, Fine Gael was reinvigorated by the influx of 20 new TDs, and immediately launched into robust opposition mode. Labour leader Pat Rabbitte resigned in the autumn and was replaced by Eamon Gilmore, who was elected unopposed. Sinn Féin won a Seanad seat to compensate for the poor election performance and cordial relations were established with Fine Gael and Labour.
After his election victory, Ahern introduced a note of instability into the political equation by indicating that he would step down some time during the current Dáil. Then his evidence to the Mahon tribunal in September raised further questions about his personal finances. Economic storm clouds began to gather and by the time the Dáil resumed in the autumn the political atmosphere had changed significantly. The Opposition started off as they meant to continue, with a motion of no confidence in the Taoiseach and opinion polls a few weeks later showed a big slump in Fianna Fáil's support. The party was back to where it had been at the beginning of the election campaign, but that did not cause too much angst on the coalition benches.
"It's like winning the All Ireland final and them losing the GOAL challenge a few days later. It doesn't really matter," said one Fianna Fáil figure, summing up the view from Government Buildings as the Christmas break beckoned.