Liz O'Donnell - profile: With 14 continuous years on the Dáil benches, five of them as a junior minister, Liz O'Donnell is very much at the top of the PDs. Her reputation as a liberal and her closeness to Mary Harney always made her a potential party leader.
However, failure to make any real effort to cultivate the membership of the party and a reputation within the party of not being a team player made this an unlikely outcome.
Her political career has very much been defined by Mary Harney, whom she has described on many occasions as her "mentor". It was Mary Harney who brought Liz O'Donnell into the Progressive Democrats.
A graduate in law from Trinity College, in the late 1980s O'Donnell was active in the Council for the Status of Women and in the Women's Political Association.
Mary Harney, then a junior minister, persuaded O'Donnell to join the PDs and stand for election to Dublin County Council in 1991. The following year she was also elected to the Dáil in the snap November election. She soon gained a reputation as an eloquent speaker and as one of the most liberal voices in Dáil Éireann.
In 1997, she took the last seat in Dublin South in a disastrous election for the PDs, making her one of just four TDs remaining in the party. Her near defeat in 1997 showed up a key weakness in her unwillingness to put in the traditional hours of taking clinics and canvassing.
In Buswells Hotel, at a PD gathering on election night, when it was suggested to her that she should begin canvassing straight away, she is reported to have remarked: "Why change a winning formula?"
She didn't and she was re-elected in 2002 with an increased vote.
After the 1997 election she was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and took a prominent role in the negotiations running up to the signing of the Belfast Agreement.
She also became heavily involved in the issue of foreign aid and pushed the Government to fulfil its 2000 commitment to increase foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2007. She is reported to have threatened to resign over the issue.
In 2002 she stepped down from the junior ministerial ranks for family reasons, a move which cost her some support within the party. However, her refusal to run in the 2004 European elections confirmed to many within the party that she may have been unwilling to make the personal sacrifices needed in modern politics.
Again, for a potential leader, she avoided the "chicken and chips" circuit of local late-night constituency functions, a rite of passage in any party, the PDs being no exception. Since 2002 she has often criticised her coalition partners in Fianna Fáil.