Fianna Fáil TDs and senators left west Cork yesterday with more on their minds than the upcoming reshuffle, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent.
As Fianna Fáil TDs left the party gathering at Inchydoney Lodge in west Cork yesterday, some were buoyed up by the hope of promotion in this month's reshuffle.
In reality, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, cannot satisfy all demands, as he pointedly made clear to colleagues during his opening speech to the two-day meeting on Monday. Besides a few Cabinet posts and some junior-minister appointments, Mr Ahern is preparing to offer consolation prizes to others, loosely based on the British model of parliamentary under-secretary.
Unlike the British posts, however, the new jobs are not ministerial in rank, and cannot be unless Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats decide to amend the Ministers and Secretaries' Act. However, the PDs are unlikely to do so just to soothe Mr Ahern's internal difficulties.
Under Mr Ahern's nascent proposal, the new appointees would improve links between members of the Cabinet and the parliamentary party, though they would have no access to confidential information. "They are non-jobs with no money, no responsibility, and no role," one seasoned TD said last night. "If he does this, it is only to offer a sop to the disappointed."
In time, the posts will disappoint unless this Cabinet manages to solve perennial complaints from backbenchers about the need to improve communication between ministers and the party. For more than 20 years, every Cabinet has promised faithfully to do so in its first months of office. Every Cabinet, distanced by the pressures and privileges of office, has forgotten.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil faces a battle to reinvigorate its organisation, whose weaknesses were exposed during the local election campaign in June. In many places, cumann meetings have not taken place for years - 31 years in one extraordinary case - while new people have not gone inside the door of many others for years. New blood is now the priority: "We don't need thousands, you don't need national recruitment campaigns - you need 10, or 12 people in key places," said FF Cork North Central TD Billy Kelleher.
Most importantly, the party organisation has to work between elections and not just during campaigns, particularly in crucial urban constituencies. However, change will not be easy. Too often, local organisations are "the personal armies" of TDs, designed to fend off internal challenge as much as to promote the party.
Complaining bitterly about "constituency-hogging", Mr Ahern warned this would have to stop, though the irony of the man with the largest personal army lecturing others was not lost on many. Promotions, he said, would not be offered to those who tended to their local turf above all else and who failed to turn up at party meetings around the country when asked to do so.
TDs would not be promoted unless they dedicated themselves fully to their ministerial and party duties, while office-holders who had failed to do so could soon pay the price, the Taoiseach made clear.
However, Mr Ahern issued a similar warning back in 2002, and before that in 1997, and it is arguable whether those failing to meet the grade were ever properly punished.
Given that "80 TDs will not go into 28 jobs", Mr Ahern will have more disgruntled people on his hands in late September than he had yesterday. Loyalty will be tested.
Though Mr Ahern will face bruised egos regardless of what he does, he is unlikely to face irreparable conflicts with the PDs unless both sides are spoiling for a fight. Revenues are up and the economic forecasts are benign despite higher oil prices and international instability.
Faced with Mary Harney's warning that she would quit the Coalition if Fianna Fáil set out to go on a spending spree, Mr Ahern repeatedly denied he had any such intention. So far, Fianna Fáil has shown no desire to kick the PDs, as could be judged by their embarrassed reaction to broadcaster, George Hook's jocular reference to Mary Harney as "a rat" during his after-dinner speech on Monday.
The same desire to keep the PDs sweet was evidenced yesterday by Mr Ahern's reaction after he blundered by saying she had given "a stupid answer to a stupid question" the day before about spending. Clearly kicking himself, Mr Ahern spent ages trying to retrieve the remark - though with little success, since it was captured by TV3 - by complimenting both the PDs and Ms Harney.
Government spending can rise comfortably between now and the general election, though not on the scale of 2001/2002, when it jumped by 22 per cent in a year. But it does not need to escalate in such a fashion if the Government successfully targets spending on key problem areas; accident and emergency, elderly care, children, the disabled.
The difficulty will not be with money, it will be about the delivery of services. For seven years, the Government has struggled to bring about some of the very changes it now believes it can do in two years.
For now, the winning of the next election lies in Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats' own hands, though this will not remain the situation for much longer. Despite the over-hyped "Mullingar Accord" between Fine Gael and Labour, the Government is not yet facing a unified Opposition. In time, however, Mr Ahern knows that he will.