Connect: Bertie Ahern has made a gaffe in snubbing Dublin's northside. Northsiders are traditionally more Fianna Fáil, more GAA (Croke Park and Parnell Park are north of the Liffey) and even more Catholic (Dublin's Catholic pro-cathedral and archbishop's palace are on the northside while both of Dublin's Protestant cathedrals are south of the river) than their southside counterparts. But resentment at Ahern's slight to his fellow northsiders is growing.
Months after the farcical demise of Ivor Callely, Ahern has promoted Meath TD Mary Wallace to junior minister for agriculture. SeHaughey, Pat Carey and Jim Glennon - all, like Callely, Dublin northside TDs - had hoped for the promotion. Fianna Fáil could yet come unstuck for repeatedly ignoring its traditional Dublin city and county base in order to consolidate more recent gains.
Even in the general election of 2002, when Fine Gael took a drubbing (particularly in its Dublin southside heartland) and lost 23 seats, almost 44 per cent of voting northsiders chose Fianna Fáil while just 33 per cent of southsiders did likewise. A repeat performance would, of course, suit the Government, but many northsiders now bristle that their votes are being taken for granted.
They may decide it's, well . . . "payback time". Ahern is the sole Cabinet member from the northside, while four - Fianna Fáil's Seamus Brennan (Dublin South), Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire) and Progressive Democrat Tánaiste Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West) and that party's Michael McDowell (Dublin South East) - represent southside constituencies. It's hugely unbalanced.
It's arguable that the shift merely reflects Fianna Fáil's continuing conversion to southside, PD-ish, business values. Certainly, the fact that about six times more southsiders (one in nine of people who voted) than northsiders (one in about 50) voted for the PDs suggests that the southside - like the PDs who have, after all, only eight Dáil seats - has become disproportionately influential.
There's a growing suspicion too that Ahern has been allowing the primarily southside PDs to dump on the northside. Sure, he goes to Croke Park to follow the Dubs and can continue to act the professional northsider, but the facts suggest much of this is cosmetic.
More than ever he has made Fianna Fáil a party of big business and northsiders are increasingly unimpressed.
Perhaps it's to be expected that as Fianna Fáil becomes more and more bourgeois the party's appeal - like that of its coalition partner - will be increasingly focused on the more bourgeois southside. Such a strategy, however, leaves the party more vulnerable in its traditional GAA and culturally Catholic Dublin constituencies. Still, Ahern leading a largely southside party remains possible! Protesting before Fingal County Council's vote on a proposed giant sewage plant for Portrane, actor Stephen Rea told RTÉ it was another attempt "to downgrade the northside". Given that, in addition, Dublin's "superdump" and new prison and Co Meath's nearby incinerator have or are being politically foisted on the northside, Rea clearly had a point. The northside, in addition, has no Luas.
Consider Minister for the Environment Dick Roche's Strategic Infrastructure Bill, which has a stated aim of fast-tracking projects deemed to be of strategic importance. Roche represents Wicklow and his Bill is obviously an attempt to bypass local democracy. Naturally, his Bill has been welcomed by Ibec and the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland - both outfits being wildly pro-business. It's all further evidence that Fianna Fáil under Ahern has become utterly business-orientated.
Or consider Michael McDowell's determination to impose a replacement Mountjoy Prison on a north Dublin site. Well, he's a southside TD and his party - in Dublin, at least - is an overwhelmingly southside party. What does he care? What, for that matter, does Dick Roche care, so long as he has a Bill that will get him re-elected by keeping unwanted infrastructure out of Wicklow? (It is telling that the proposed incinerator for Ringsend - even though, with its smelly sewage works, the area has more than enough unwanted plant anyway - should be omitted from Roche's Bill. It certainly appears like a grossly undemocratic move intended to save McDowell's vote in his constituency.) Or indeed, how about Ibec? The business and employers' body is located on Dublin's southside. It's no wonder it welcomes Roche's Bill, one intended consequence of which is to dump on the northside. The outfit's director of enterprise, Brendan Butler, wants Roche's Bill beefed up to "tackle" legal challenges to planning decisions.
So, it seems Bertie Ahern may be undone by his own hubris. Perhaps he believes that as he comes from Dublin's northside, he can get away with all that cosmetic nonsense - Croke Park, Fagan's bar in Drumcondra, pro-1916 commemorations. Perhaps he can, but his southside ministers' obvious desire to dump unwanted projects on the other side of the Liffey may yet undo him.
Certainly, northside Fianna Fáil voters are feeling taken for granted by their allegedly "most cunning and most devious" leader. His strategy to retain his party's record southside vote may yet prove to be cunning and devious. But increasingly Dublin's northside Fianna Fáil voters are coming to the conclusion that, for all his "rale Dub" posturing, Bertie Ahern is complicit in dumping on them.