Last year's dying party tag has been put aside for now, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
There isn't an election in sight, yet a Fine Gael press conference yesterday attracted a large pack of reporters, three TV cameras, six photographers and some Fine Gael politicians and officials looking very pleased with themselves.
The "dying party" tag has been put aside for now. Good local and European election results, the avoidance of the presidential trouble experienced by Labour and the Greens and - most importantly - Labour's commitment to seek a pre-election pact have positioned Fine Gael again as the credible leader of an alternative government.
Being presumptuous about the Greens, that alternative now has 58 Dáil seats. It remains 26 seats short of an overall Dáil majority, but that is one fewer than the day before yesterday.
As Fine Gael's two-day annual parliamentary party meeting begins in Kilkenny today, there is more optimism than seemed reasonable at the same event last year.
The decision of Independent TD Dr Liam Twomey to become a Fine Gael deputy was the main attraction at yesterday's Shelbourne Hotel press conference. "This is a vote of confidence in this party," said Enda Kenny.
It is indeed. Two years ago Fine Gael couldn't be optimistic it would be in government after the next election. The party first had to convince people that it had a future.
After the election disaster everything Enda Kenny did was depicted as a misjudgment: failure bred failure and even the choice of a republican ballad-singing group for the party's Christmas party was portrayed as an example of its political degeneration.
Some in Labour laughed at Fine Gael's decision earlier this year to opt out of the presidential contest, saying it offered them a golden opportunity to seize leadership of the Opposition. They're not laughing now.
Fine Gael's first task after 2002 was to re-establish itself as the undisputed leader of the Opposition, and its leader as the undisputed alternative taoiseach.
It has done that through strong local and European election results and the firming up of the alternative government alliance with Labour. Nobody talks about Pat Rabbitte being the alternative taoiseach now.
Fine Gael has had some new Dáil prospects elected to local authorities; it has an alternative government with itself as the core; it has a new recruit from among the Independents; and the satisfaction of seeing its much derided decision earlier this year to opt out of the presidential contest paying off politically.
"It's not long since Labour were on the lecture circuit telling us how we were doing everything wrong," remarked one party strategist this week, failing to conceal his Schadenfreude. Tempting as it is, however, Fine Gael cannot take too much pleasure in the misfortunes of Labour and the Greens.
For if Fine Gael is to return to government after the next general election, Labour and the Green Party have also to do well.
A minority of Labour people are anxious about the embrace with Fine Gael. Mr Rabbitte faces a national executive meeting next week and he will be hoping that all sections within it will be content with the party's electoral strategy.
Meanwhile, tomorrow in Kilkenny, Fine Gael deputies and senators will receive a detailed presentation on the constituencies in which the party leadership believes it can make gains.
It will not have escaped their - or Labour's - attention that had Fine Gael taken just 2 per cent more of the first-preference votes in several key constituencies in 2002, the result would not have been half as bad for them, but could have spelt disaster for Labour.
Labour won seven of its 21 seats by very narrow margins over Fine Gael candidates. Paul Bradford needed just 429 more votes to retain his seat against Labour's Joe Sherlock in Cork East; 778 votes would have put the late Jim Mitchell ahead of Labour's Joe Costello in Dublin Central; 605 votes would have given Ruairí Quinn's seat to Fine Gael's Frances Fitzgerald; 631 more votes for Fine Gael's Sheila Terry in Dublin West would have given her Joan Burton's seat; 349 votes was all Breeda Moynihan Cronin had to spare over Fine Gael in Kerry South; just 187 votes would have given Alan Dukes the seat of Jack Wall in Kildare South; Jan O'Sullivan had 305 votes to spare over Fine Gael's Mary Jackman in Limerick East.
There are those in Labour who reason that if the alternative government proposal benefits Fine Gael, but makes little or no difference to Labour, then it could backfire.
"If we put on one \ point and Fine Gael put on three, then we risk losing a half dozen seats," said one fearful Labour figure.
However, the argument in favour of the two parties running as an alternative government is that this will substantially improve transfers between the parties, while the prospect of change may also lead to a significant drop in the Fianna Fáil vote.
Fine Gael's gains in some of these constituencies therefore would be from Fianna Fáil (or the PDs in Limerick East), not Labour. Labour and the Greens could also hope to make gains, aided in some cases by Fine Gael transfers.
There is more to winning power than counting numbers in constituencies.
Enda Kenny proved as difficult as ever to pin down yesterday on the political outlook he and his party might offer to voters.
He mentioned his ambition to build a "caring coalition", but Fianna Fáil has been using the "caring" word for the past few months as well, and it not clear if it means anything in terms of policy.
Mr Kenny was invited yesterday to say whether his party would be coming from the right-of-centre political position espoused by Fine Gael's sister parties in Europe, or the left-of-centre position espoused by his potential coalition partners.
He replied that there had to be "a strong economy and clear fiscal policies" before adding, correctly, that "obviously everybody agrees on this".
He went on to say that the "main battlegrounds" were "obviously in the areas of justice, health, education and fiscal policy". There were problems arising from neglect in the areas of mental health, depression and equality.
"It is in those areas that we will be developing bodies of work from our own perspective and then deal with the other parties as to how best we can lay out that platform that the people can have in advance of a general election."
He accepted that every political party set out these issues as priorities. When asked would he position his approach ideologically on these issues, he spoke about "the distance between announcements that are made and the reality of people's lives" and said this was what Fine Gael was concerned about. He mentioned as an example an 87-year-old woman who was concerned about a particular issue. She would not care whether a government was left- or right-wing so long as her difficulties were dealt with, he said.
Fine Gael has shown that it is not dead, and is working to convince voters that it can win power. It has yet to be clear about what it will do if it succeeds.