So-called study days by political parties are something we've borrowed from Europe. The theory goes: bring the foot soldiers together away from parliament, from distractions, give them a big gee-up speech, get in some outside experts and have a social occasion.
These events have replaced the by-election campaign get-togethers. We politicians used to pile into the constituency being contested for three weeks where we got to know colleagues, made lasting friendships and discussed problems. That doesn't happen as much nowadays, so the study days are a good substitute. The sessions are all about teambuilding. And one might assume that the party leader's speech, guest speakers and debating sessions thereafter are all that are needed to help knit the parliamentary party together. What is missing is the single most important part of the team-building process.
Allow me to give a sporting example. You might have noticed that this weekend Cork and Meath will contest the All-Ireland Football Final. More than likely the players will have been given their share of motivational speeches. They'll have spent time together, getting to know each other, but the one thing managers and mentors will have been working on hardest will be what, precisely, they have to do on Sunday - what role each player has and what strategy they will follow.
The same communications task faced Fianna Fail over the past couple of days in Galway, and I'm not entirely sure that it was carried out. That could be very bad news because this Government is facing its most difficult test, dealing with the nurses.
On Thursday the Taoiseach behaved untypically. A master negotiator, on this occasion he has stated clearly that he will not negotiate. On top of that, he has decided the group he will take on are nurses. One of the unwritten rules of Irish politics is "Don't go up against the nurses."
So has the Taoiseach made a mistake?
Bertie Ahern is a man who understands economics. He knows our prosperity is built on the last two partnership agreements. To capitulate to the nurses will, inevitably, require a capitulation to the gardai and then the teachers, and so on.
The dominoes will fall and with them the control we have over our economic well-being. The Taoiseach has to make a stand, but he also knows that doing so against the nurses could be political suicide.
Except that I think he has noticed a subtle shift in public opinion. If you've been listening to the radio chat shows and phone-ins over the week you will have heard very few voices raised against the nurses. Nor would you expect there to be. We would all like to give them enormous pay rises, as I'm sure would the Taoiseach, if it weren't for the domino effect. The nurses are blameless, but their union leaders have made mistakes. One is that they have had to get involved in a number of pay disputes over the last few years. Technically, this is not a mistake, as the structure of their pay agreements necessitated this series of confrontations, but it has had a twofold effect: people are beginning to get bored with nurses' pay disputes and are beginning to be reminded of the boy who cried wolf.
I believe there is a quiet but growing minority whose support of the nurses is not quite as wholehearted as it used to be. Once a strike starts, and people begin to get worried about levels of care when the already chronic understaffing problems are made worse, support may weaken.
However, Bertie Ahern cannot exploit this shift directly. He cannot claim that people are moving away from the nurses because no one will want to stand up and say the nurses don't deserve a pay rise. Another mistake by the nursing unions was the decision to go to the Labour Court. There is a simple premise behind the Labour Court. An employer and a group of employees have reached an impasse in their pay negotiations, so they agree to put their arguments to an independent arbiter and agree to be bound by the arbiter's decision. Except in this case the nursing unions didn't play by the rules. They simply put the recommendations of the Labour Court to their members without so much as a hint that those members should accept the deal.
This the Taoiseach should use against them if he is going to come out on top in this standoff. He needs to point out that the nurses have rejected a deal put forward, not by the Government or the Department of Health, but by an entity with no axe to grind, by the body put in place as a back-up to the partnership ideal to make recommendations which favour neither side but are simply fair.
My worry is that the last two days should have been spent, at least in part, working with the TDs and senators explaining to them that this is why a hardline stance has been adopted, why the party leader has decided to break a number of his own rules. The foot soldiers will be under ferocious attack on this issue in every constituency and if they are to win, they must all know exactly how they are to deal with those attacks at the local level. Perhaps the Taoiseach might consider spending another couple of days in Galway with his troops. There are worse places to be.