It was not as bad as it might have been, Dermot Ahern said, when he was asked on Morning Ireland yesterday about the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll. "Fianna Fail," he said, "are holding their own." Now, the poll had shown the party's core support, at 34 per cent, was lower than it had ever been. And the satisfaction ratings of Government, Taoiseach and Tanaiste were at their lowest since the formation of the Coalition.
Dermot Ahern, however, was clutching at two straws. When the 25 per cent of respondents who'd expressed no opinion were excluded, FF's notional support rose to 45 per cent. And, as he observed, neither Fine Gael nor Labour had their supporters rocking in the aisles.
This is true. But to rely on an estimate of notional support while ignoring the clarity of a core vote and satisfaction ratings is to hope against hope - as Denis Foley did when he feared he might have an Ansbacher account. And if FG and Labour are crawling unsteadily upwards, FF and the government are sliding steadily down.
The O'Flaherty affair is one of the reasons for the fall, but it's not, as Bertie Ahern would like us to believe, the only reason. The public, it's plain, saw Hugh O'Flaherty's nomination to the European Investment Bank as a blatant example of FF cronyism at work; more than three-quarters of those questioned by MRBI say it has damaged the Coalition.
My view is it also stands for other, more complicated and less recent events being examined at Dublin Castle. There we're being reminded once more of Haughey's mocking refusal to account for himself - "My best recollection is that I've forgotten" - and Ray Burke's ministerial helping hand for his cronies in Century Radio.
But scandal is one of many influences on public opinion; and in today's segment of the Irish Times/MRBI poll you'll find that house prices, health and the gap between rich and poor top the list of issues - ahead of taxation, employment and traffic - on which people believe the next general election should be fought.
These are the issues on which it should be fought; they are clearly the object of public anger and frustration. But if the electorate is dissatisfied with the FF-PD Coalition, it's still uncertain where it might turn to for a dependable alternative.
When they were asked to choose between the many coalition arrangements that could be on offer, those surveyed suggested that none seemed to fit the bill. Fewer than 15 per cent favoured any of the Fianna Fail or Fine Gael-led options. ein. Far more, 27 per cent, either expressed no opinion or said "none of the above." Indeed, in a remarkable change from old rigidity, about 20 per cent of Fianna Fail supporters chose coalition with Fine Gael and 20 per cent of Fine Gael supporters favoured coalition with Fianna Fail.
The only senior members of either party to take this proposition seriously have been the great John Kelly of FG and, more recently, a highly respected former minister, David Andrews of FF. Never before has it been countenanced by significant numbers of FF or FG supporters.
Bertie Ahern's eyes are on an FF-Labour coalition, as he showed in Kilkenny. But the auguries are not good: a clear majority of Labour supporters favour arrangements which do not include FF. And what would Charlie McCreevy make of it? McCreevy is to political partnership what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is to pluralism.
But these are difficult times in which conventional barrows are being upset on every corner, usually, though not always, by the young. MRBI conducted another poll of late for other media outlets, including 98 FM, TV3 and the Star. It showed that, among 18 to 24 year-olds, 54 per cent either didn't know which party to trust or refused to trust any of them. Just over one in five chose Fianna Fail and 14 per cent opted for Sinn Fein, 8 per cent for the Green Party, 5 per cent each for Fine Gael and Labour, and 3 per cent for the PDs.
Clearly, trust in the electoral system is declining among the young and, as the leaders of the Labour Party in Britain discovered this week, older voters are beginning to show their resentment at the pensions they're expected to live on and the social conditions they're expected to endure.
One difference between old and young which may worry governments on both sides of the Irish Sea is the fact that the old are more likely to turn out on polling day.
Efforts to improve participation in public life - and address the problems posed by market dominance - were debated by delegates at a conference in Dublin this week organised by one of the most energetic groups engaged in social partnership, the Conference of Religious of Ireland.
They heard Sean Healy and Brigid Reynolds of CORI propose a new social contract against exclusion which, they said, would involve "the development of basic measures in the economic, political, cultural and social fields to reverse the substantial gap between poor people and the rest of society."
Which seems to be what a significant section of the electorate covered in today's poll have in mind.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie