ANALYSIS:MICHEÁL MARTIN'S leadership of Fianna Fáil is damaged, although by no means fatally, following veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne's rejection of his offer that party Oireachtas members could facilitate the former Late Late Showhost's nomination as an Independent.
When Martin phoned Byrne with the suggestion, he leapfrogged his own parliamentary party in a number of important respects. And without wide consultation, he appeared to effectively decide on behalf of what is left of the Fianna Fáil grassroots that the party would not be running an internal candidate, and selected Byrne as the person they should get behind.
Despite Byrne’s weekend refusal, Martin’s supporters still argue that he was right in principle to have made the offer. They suggest the majority of the disgruntled are long-established Senators who are still smarting from the leader’s request in March that they consider stepping aside from Seanad elections to facilitate younger members he believed would win Dáil seats in future.
The Senators and others have no right to grumble, because a sub-committee charged with deciding Fianna Fáil’s approach to the election had been established with their agreement, Martin’s supporters insist. That would be fine if the committee had actually met, but it still has not. As Byrne reminded us frequently last week: “All of Fianna Fáil are on holiday.”
That was not quite the case, although a large portion of those tasked with deciding the party’s approach were trying to take a mid-August break, albeit one interrupted by calls and texts from colleagues and reporters on the subject of the presidency.
It is now a case of back to the drawing board for Fianna Fáil, although the party is not without options. It can choose to back a candidate from within its own ranks, the most likely being the MEP for Ireland South Brian Crowley, assuming he has not been too offended by the overtures to Byrne.
Fianna Fáil could also wait to see whether another Independent candidate emerges that it could get behind or, as is more unlikely, it could lend its support to one of the candidates already in the field.
Another option is to remain out of the race altogether. This would hurt the pride of some party stalwarts, but many of the new breed point to the delicate question of money. Unlike Byrne, who had “more offers than I can cope with”, Fianna Fáil is not inundated with financial contributions to assist in the expensive election.
The real division within Fianna Fáil is between those who have truly absorbed the meaning of the electorate’s forensic removal of the party from power in February’s general election and those who have yet to comprehend the organisation’s diminished position on the national stage.
Pragmatism will inform the final decision. The unruffled reaction of prominent party TDs to the Euroscepticism espoused by Byrne last week showed the party retained some of its once-famed ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Asked whether Byrne’s stance was not out of synch with views previously espoused by Fianna Fáil, Limerick TD Niall Collins said: “If it is, it’s not an issue for me.”
