With just a year to go to a general election, there is now a real danger that the party will not be able to fight a cohesive campaign, writes Stephen Collins, Political Correspondent
The eruption of a debate in the Progressive Democrats on the leadership issue was inevitable at some stage, given that Mary Harney has been in the job now for almost 13 years. However, with just a year to go to a general election, the timing could hardly have been worse and there is a real danger that the party will not be able to fight a cohesive campaign.
Although Mary Harney and Michael McDowell did their best yesterday to put matters behind them and paper over the cracks in separate media interviews, the events of recent days will undoubtedly take their toll in terms of fuelling tension and distrust at the worst possible time.
In every election, apart from their first in 1987, the PDs have walked the tightrope between triumph and disaster and twice they came perilously close to falling off.
The party had a brilliant result in 2002, winning eight seats with just 4 per cent of the vote, but the other side of the coin is that any small slippage could result in a lot of its seats being lost.
The PDs will inevitably be under pressure from a resurgent Fine Gael at the next election and the rift in the party at this stage could undermine confidence in the key marginal constituencies it managed to win last time out.
The consolation for the PDs is that in-fighting and tension is nothing new in the party, but despite all the difficulties, it managed to survive and prosper. Over the course of its history there have been a few bouts of blood-letting but it has not stopped the PDs from being the most successful small party in Irish political history.
The PDs have been in office for a remarkable 12 out of their 20 years in existence and have an impact on Irish political life out of all proportion to their numbers, despite rows, defections and resignations.
They survived the departure of Pat Cox and Martin Cullen, the defeat of Des O'Malley in the European election campaign of 1994 and the disastrous election campaign of 1997 which saw the party reduced to just four seats in an election which it entered with high expectations.
That bruising 1997 campaign is where the latest crisis in the party had its origins. Nobody has ever taken full responsibility for the implosion of that campaign and Mary Harney and Michael McDowell clearly believe the other was at fault for the two disastrous elements of the election manifesto that promised a review of the way the single parent allowance was paid and the proposed reduction in the number of public servants.
Mr McDowell lost his seat in that general election and he made no secret of the fact that he blamed his party leader.
Despite the election shambles, the PDs managed to get into Government with Fianna Fáil but Mr McDowell left the party, to the dismay of Ms Harney who had been installed as Tánaiste.
Despite their differences she was able to offer him the post of attorney general in 1999 and it was an offer he simply could not refuse. That did not entice him back into the party, though, and he made it clear he would only come back on his own terms. He came up with a detailed proposal for a radical change in the party structure with himself as party president as the price of his return in 2000 but the offer was turned down.
In January 2002, Mr McDowell did return to the fold and was appointed party president. Crucially, though, the position was in the gift of the party leader and was not the independent office controlling the overall direction of the party that Mr McDowell had originally envisaged.
The big question then and now was whether there was a deal on now long Ms Harney would stay as leader. She was adamant yesterday that there was never a deal and said that it would not be in her power to make a pact to hand over the leadership to Mr McDowell as it was not in her gift. While that is clearly true, it still begs the question as to whether Mr McDowell was given any reason to believe that she would step down at some stage before the election expected in 2007 to allow a new leader to take over. Mr McDowell clearly believes that he was given some indication that there would be a change of leadership during the lifetime of the current Dáil and that he would have an opportunity to contest the vacancy along with anybody else who wanted to go before the party's electoral college.
His decision to bring matters to a head at this stage is the puzzling aspect of the whole saga.
There has certainly been some speculation in the PDs over the past two years about when Ms Harney was likely to call it a day as leader but the decision to raise the issue was bound to lead to a rebuff.
One of the iron laws of democratic politics is that it is never wise for a leadership contender to challenge an incumbent.
Usually the challenger alienates support and doesn't succeed to the top job, even if the leader departs. And even if he does succeed, a leader who takes over a divided party is usually short lived and unsuccessful.
The one thing that looks certain now that the dust has cleared after the week of internal squabbling is that Mary Harney will lead the PDs into the next election. Who will lead it after that is an open question and everything will depend on whether the party can bounce back and put in a creditable performance in 2007.