As it approached the election, the Fianna Fáil/PD Government seemed to me to have been vulnerable on two grounds: the first being economic and the second social, writes Garret FitzGerald.
First, the economic issue: in 2001 and 2002 Fianna Fáil's budgets over-heated our economy just as we were about to face full employment for the first time and just when our exports to the US and other areas were being threatened by the growing strength of the euro. This naturally led to a major deterioration in the competitiveness of our products. In turn, that lost us one-sixth of our share of world trade, the price of which was paid by the more than 30,000 workers who lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector.
A sign of the damage being done by this Government-generated inflation was the fact that throughout most of the pre-election years our consumer price index was rising twice as rapidly as in the remainder of the EU. Between 1999 and 2006 consumer prices rocketed upwards by over 36 per cent compared with an increase of only half that amount elsewhere in Europe. During most of this period continued Irish economic growth was sustained only by a strong rise in private consumption, generated by a massive - and dangerous - creation of credit.
How was it that the Fianna Fáil/PD Government managed to maintain the impression that they had been managing the economy successfully? Quite simply because throughout all of this period the Opposition did not get any of these disturbing facts across to the public.
It is true that some references were occasionally made by Opposition spokesmen to the rising cost of living, but usually in fairly simplistic terms. So far as I can recall, at no stage was the Government's role in overheating the economy in a period of full employment ever exposed as the principal precipitating factor in this inflation.
Why was this? When I raised that question while debating the election results on RTÉ Radio late on Friday night and on Saturday morning I was told by Opposition spokesmen that they would have damaged themselves by such criticism of Government policy. "It would have seemed like begrudgery," they said.
It would seem that both parties in Opposition doubted their capacity to put across these key facts to the public. They had convinced themselves fatalistically that, no matter how compelling a case could be made against Fianna Fáil's economic competence, the Government parties would nevertheless be bound to win any argument that was fought on an economic issue, so they should avoid economic policy altogether. The Opposition's strongest pre-election card was simply not played.
And, of course, not having exposed before the election the mess the Government had made of the economy, the electorate was left under the delusion that Fianna Fáil had shown themselves economically competent during the previous five years.
So, at the very end of the campaign, the electorate simply turned back to the very Government which had created such dramatic inflation and undermined our competitiveness.
To sum up: however right the Opposition may have been to major on other issues during the election campaign, it was, I am convinced, a mistake for them not to have blunted the edge of Fianna Fáil's illusory advantage in economic matters well before the campaign had started - especially when they could have so easily built upon latent public disgruntlement at prices having visibly risen so much faster here than in the countries where a majority of the voters had been holidaying each year.
The second mistake, I believe, was that the Opposition did not draw sufficiently upon the widely-felt sense of guilt that exists among the Irish public about the huge, and amply documented, development of income inequality in recent times.
No doubt all our political parties - even those which are themselves ideologically committed on this issue - felt it politically prudent not to raise issues of wealth redistribution during the course of an election campaign. On such an issue it may generally be best for politicians to do good surreptitiously during the lifetime of a government rather than to address this matter at a time when people are about to vote.
But that does not mean that some pricking of the public's social conscience about the flagrant inequality of our society would not have brought sympathy and even support to Opposition parties. No doubt we have become a more selfish society than we used to be in the past, but our people are not conscienceless - as can be seen from their consistent generosity to the Third World, and from the very large number of people who still give part of their free time to others in need.
So long as the public's pockets are not directly threatened by talk of higher taxes,many voters will respond to politicians who show that they genuinely care about social issues - as, in fact, many of them do. The negative reaction to the PDs embracing positively some aspects of inequality is testimony to the humanity of most people.
Politicians frequently underestimate the better instincts of an important part of the electorate, perhaps because so much of their time is necessarily spent being required to listen to lobbying efforts by some of the more self-interested and greedier elements of the community - an experience that I know myself can be a most dispiriting feature of a political career.
But it is neither right nor necessary for politicians to ignore in their public discourse aspects of inequality and disadvantage in our society, and to fail to encourage social concern. That does not help the reputation of their profession, and I am convinced from my own experience, both in politics and since, that there is support to be won by revealing some of the genuine social concern that motivates many of those in politics.
Finally, during the week that followed the publication of the final Irish Times/TNSmrbi poll showing that, after all, Fianna Fáil had a good chance of jumping ahead of the Opposition, why did the latter not play the Sinn Féin card by pointing out that the best way to head off the danger of a Fianna Fáil government being put into office by Sinn Féin could be to vote for the main Opposition parties?
Of course, when one is out of politics one always thinks that one knows better than those who are still in there, fighting their corner.