Inside Politics: Fianna Fáil TDs carried the glow of last Saturday's ardfheis with them back to the Dáil this week. The main talking points were the Taoiseach's confident delivery of the keynote speech and Brian Cowen's impressive and thoughtful warm-up before it.
It reminded TDs what an able politician the Minister for Finance can be when he speaks from the heart and doesn't bother with a script.
For all that, the ardfheis was a curious one. Most of the Ministers spent most of the day denouncing Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens, sometimes in colourful language but often in tired clichés. If Fianna Fáil is so confident about the next election, why give the Opposition parties all that time and attention, instead of spelling out the party's own vision for another term in government?
The other curious feature of the ardfheis was the announcement by the Taoiseach that a referendum on children's rights will be held before the election. The announcement came out of the blue and appears to have been something of a last-minute move. Many senior Ministers were not even aware on the day of the announcement that it was due to take place.
The only conclusion is that Bertie Ahern is determined to have a referendum of some kind before he goes to the country for a new mandate. He originally set his sights on a poll to ratify the latest Northern settlement, as set out in the St Andrews Agreement, but it now seems very unlikely that such a referendum will happen, even if Sinn Féin and the DUP ultimately sign up to the deal. The British favour elections in the North rather than a referendum and it would be very odd to have a vote in the South, which is not affected by the deal, if there is none in the North.
The Taoiseach's announcement about a referendum on children came just as the Northern referendum slipped off the agenda. Instead of going to the country in advance of the election seeking a mandate for the ultimate settlement of the Anglo-Irish quarrel, it now seems he will be going to the people to ask them to vote to enshrine the rights of children in the Constitution.
On the face of it, a referendum on behalf of children looks to be as much of a sure-fire winner as a referendum on peace, but it may not be as simple as all that, even though there are valid reasons for having a referendum to protect the position of children, as outlined by the Minister of State for Children, Brian Lenihan, last weekend.
Only two months ago, Mr Lenihan told a UN committee in Geneva that he had embarked on an article by article examination of the provisions of our Constitution as they impact on children. Big issues like adoption and child protection are at the heart of this examination and there is a belief across the political system that something has to be done to clarify current uncertainty.
However, a referendum on children is something that could very easily go wrong. The danger for the Government is that it could ultimately find itself being opposed by liberals, who are seeking more than it may be prepared to give in terms of spelling out the legal, social and economic rights of children and also by conservatives who fear that the fundamental rights of the family, as outlined, in the Constitution could be under threat from a constitutional amendment.
On Monday, Fergus Finlay of the children's charity Barnardos outlined his organisation's demand for two major changes to the constitution. One was a proposal to replace Article 42.5, which at the moment allows the State to intervene to "endeavour to supply the place of the parents", where the parents "for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children" with an amendment stating: "In exceptional cases, where parents fail to protect the welfare of their children, the State shall take such action as is necessary to ensure such protection." Such a formulation is likely to provoke opposition from conservative groups who would argue that the State was being given superior rights to parents and that the protections for the family set out in de Valera's constitution were being cast aside.
The Government will obviously seek to come up with a wording which avoids alienating interested groups on both sides of the argument. A consensus will be sought with the main Opposition parties in the Dáil and agreement with them on a wording should not prove impossible. However, the danger is that a wording acceptable to a majority of politicians would not necessarily lead to a consensus from both sides of the argument outside the Dáil.
It was precisely a combination of liberals and conservatives who defeated the Taoiseach's "middle of the road" proposal to amend the constitutional provision on abortion nine months before an election. That referendum defeat had no political impact on the subsequent election but a contentious referendum debate, much closer to the election next time around, could be different.
Back in 1992, when Albert Reynolds tried to sort out the abortion mess, he, like Bertie Ahern, was opposed on the issue by liberals and conservatives. The defeat of his proposed amendment on the "substantive issue" contributed to the drubbing Fianna Fáil took in the general election held on the same day in November 1992.
If the effort to come up with the wording of a constitutional amendment on children's rights that has broad political and social support does not prove possible, the plan will be changed. What Bertie Ahern wants is a sure-fire winner in March to set himself up for the election in May. If it looks like being more trouble than it is worth, the referendum plan will be kicked to touch.