Crucial decisions will be taken in the coming days which will shape the political landscape for the foreseeable future. In the aftermath of the general election, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats opened negotiations yesterday on the formation of a new Coalition Government which would hold a comfortable Dáil majority. Fine Gael will commence the internal process of seeking a new leader today and tomorrow with a view to producing a consensus, if possible, before the 29th Dáil meets on June 6th.
The incoming Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern, holds all the cards in the current negotiations on government. Based on the verdict of the voters, he can choose his outgoing partners, the PDs; or a generic bunch of like-minded Independents, some of whom have been tried and tested for the past five years; or turn to the Green Party for the first time. The realpolitik dictates that he try to reach agreement with the PDs since he called for the re-election of the outgoing coalition and the PDs became the major beneficiaries of the campaign to stop single party government.
For all of that, there are issues more fundamental to the well-being of this State than whether Mr Michael McDowell or Ms Liz O'Donnell gets the full State car. The two parties sailed through the campaign on the crest of a wave only to concede after the election that there are tough times ahead. They managed to side-step responsibility for their failures on infrastructure and the health service during the last five years. Their funding arrangements to tackle these issues - the National Development Finance Agency and the National Transformation Fund - have major inconsistencies at their core. A compromise on the BertieBowl is among the easier items on the agenda.
The problems to be confronted in the Coalition negotiations are small by comparison with those facing Fine Gael. The main Opposition party suffered meltdown in the general election, losing not just Mr Michael Noonan as leader but a former leader, a former and current deputy leader, and eleven members of its front bench. The party, which has served in Government for two-and-a-half of the last 15 years, has only a handful of members with Ministerial experience. It is overwhelmingly a rural party now.
Fine Gael will cut a sorry state, down from 54 to 31 members, when it enters the Dáil next week. It will be a much-depleted and demoralised force in the configuration of Opposition parties. It will have to argue with the newly-enfranchised politics of the Green Party, Sinn Féin and a plethora of new Independents, as well as the Labour Party, to make its voice heard. Fine Gael will strive to reach a consensus on a new leader and, equally importantly, a distinct market space when it meets in CityWest over the next two days. In doing so, it would do well to bear in mind that the Dáil will be a different place in the political spectrum. A new generation of younger politicians will be challenging for the centre stage. It is a time for Fine Gael to think long-term - and radically.