Fianna Fáil's organisation must improve dramatically in the run-up to the next general election, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, bluntly made clear to party colleagues yesterday.
During a wide-ranging address to the parliamentary party meeting in Inchydoney in west Cork, Mr Ahern said much of the organisation was active only during election campaigns.
Urging all Fianna Fáil members to be active in their own communities, he said he believed that too many now believed that membership of the party was a sufficient contribution.
Though he refrained from individual criticism, Mr Ahern also said members of the Cabinet must improve contacts with backbench members of the parliamentary party.
The meeting later divided into seven workshops, covering problems with childcare, poverty, the care of the elderly, improving local communities and anti-social behaviour by teenagers.
Emphasising the priority he has placed on the west Cork meeting, the Taoiseach made clear that he wanted the full reports from the meetings "ready within a week" for presentation to the Cabinet.
Dealing briefly with the Cabinet reshuffle, Mr Ahern made clear that the ambitions of all cannot be satisfied. "Eighty TDs into 28 jobs, between seniors and juniors, will not go," he was quoted as saying.
Despite the proximity of the reshuffle, the atmosphere at the meeting was extremely positive, though a few TDs complained that "little would change" in its aftermath.
Pointing to the lessons offered by the local elections, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, acknowledged that "there is a perception that Fianna Fáil has moved away from its roots".
Rejecting that belief, he went on: "In politics, however, you have to deal with both the perceptions and the reality. We have to get people to see the connection between what we have done on the economy and social services."
Questioned later about the PDs' warnings on the Government's future spending, the Taoiseach made clear that resources would be targeted rather than spread piecemeal.
Effectively ruling out a repeat of the spending increases that marked the run-up to the 2002 general election, he said the Government's economic management would not go "off course". Government spending, he said, would stay inside the 7 per cent increase planned last December.
"We can do that because we have brought spending up to a high base."
The pre-2002 spending increases were funded by tax growth, he said. "We were not borrowing anything. Not alone that, we had surpluses, low interest rates and absolute stability in the economy."
If followed through in the budget negotiations to come, his remarks will help to soothe Progressive Democrat fears that Government spending rules will be significantly relaxed.
However, he kept some room for manoeuvre by saying: "The Programme for Government is the template that we work from. Of course, circumstances sometimes change.
"Issues arise that you have to alter some of the broad brush things that we stated. But fundamentally there is no change in the Programme for Government."
Rejecting labels that the Government is right-wing, he said it would be "extraordinary to suggest that I am a right-wing capitalist, when I was told before that I was a dangerous leftie".
Economic growth produced higher tax revenues that could then be used for extra social spending. "Other parties want to do that the other way around and they have bankrupted the country in the past when they tried. Primarily, we have people in society that need help, the old, the disabled, people who are marginalised. When we have spare resources we like to target those in a meaningful way, in an efficient way.
"Our management of the economy is giving us opportunities, but we are not going to do anything that knocks us off course," said Mr Ahern.
