Given the way in which Fianna Fail has straddled the Irish political landscape for more than seven decades it is surprising, on the face of it, that there have been so few published examinations of its history. Kieran Allen, Richard Dunphy and Dick Walsh have all made significant contributions; but there is, as yet, no major study of this huge, over-arching political phenomenon, which has been in power for 50 out of the 68 years since it first assumed office in 1932.
Stephen Collins's new book offers us a whole box full of pieces for this continually fascinating jigsaw. Concentrating, as it does, on the period from Lemass's retirement to the present day, it endeavours to explain some of the major forces operating within the party during this period, and the complex interaction between personal political rivalries, electoral strategy and policy issues. It has many strengths. Chief among them is the cool, unflustered way with which he deals with some of the most tempestuous times in modern Irish political history. But, where Collins is concerned, detachment does not mean indifference. His concern for the basic standards that should be observed in Irish political life shines through, and is all the more effective for being quietly understated.
Two other attributes are also noteworthy. Like all good political correspondents, he is economically literate, and pays appropriate attention to economic developments, to the social partners, and to the bedrock areas where policies are developed and implemented. And he has the good journalist's eye for telling detail: the pen-picture he draws of Ciaran Haughey's helicopter circling the house in Athlone where Brian Lenihan was staying at the height of the crisis over Lenihan's presidential candidacy, combines farce and high drama in an altogether satisfying way.
But the story he has to tell is, at the end of the day, what will make or break the book, and it is a sombre one. He argues that Fianna Fail is paying - and will continue to pay - a high price for its "long love affair" with Charles Haughey, of whose political record this book is essentially a major indictment. On the Arms Crisis, on the succession stakes at leadership elections, on the vicious intra-Cabinet rows, he provides much new information and many valuable insights.
The lack of sources for some of his versions of events may leave him open to question by those whose reputations will suffer as a result, but the narrative as a whole is suffused with an air of quiet authority which leads the reader to suspect that he knows even more than he is telling. Sometimes, he makes it quite clear what he's not telling us: the veil he draws over the identity of the political advisor (all that he says about him is that he was unpaid) who told Albert Reynolds that he could describe Des O'Malley as "dishonest" at the Beef Tribunal and get away with it.
Reynolds, incidentally, comes out of this book with a better reputation than we might have expected, but neither he nor anyone else emerges unscathed. And there is a hint, in the account of the bewildering shifts in policy on almost every issue which have ensured Fianna Fail's continuing dominance of the political spectrum, that the party has become, since Lemass, almost the negation of a political movement in that it has become a policy-taking rather than a policy-making organisation. Increasingly, in Collins's count, it is taking its policy from other people - from civil servants, from its coalition partners, from newspaper headlines. This is certainly not a fate which either de Valera or Lemass would have wished for it, or in which they would have acquiesced. But when power replaces policy as the supreme political objective, perhaps this is what happens.
This, in turn, raises another question. If Fianna Fail is, in Stephen Collins's view, paying the price for its long love affair with Charles Haughey, what is the price the Irish electorate may have to pay for its long love affair with Fianna Fail? At its very worst - the memorable European election of 1979 - Fianna Fail still achieved 35 per cent of the vote. There are many European political leaders who would regard such Fianna Fail disasters as considerable achievements. It leads a charmed life.
The Haughey revelations appear to disturb its equanimity, or its showing in the opinion polls, only marginally. The electorate expresses its distrust of Bertie Ahern but, in a separate response in the same questionnaire, opines that he's doing an excellent job. For how long can we continue to survive such contradictions? As the Celtic Tiger flexes its muscles, the exact nature of the price to be paid may be, as yet, difficult to discern. But that animal is also sharpening its claws.
John Horgan is professor of journalism at Dublin City University. His latest book, Noel Browne: Passionate Outsider, has just been published by Gill and Macmillan