The decline in Fianna Fáil’s popularity since last June is unprecedented in the history of the party. The recent TNS/MRBI survey has tracked that support for the party has dropped from 42 per cent to 22 per cent over the past eight months. The leader’s satisfaction rating has declined from 52 per cent to 24 per cent. This presents an alarming prospect for all party members, supporters and especially candidates in the forthcoming local and European elections.
The last local elections were held in 2004. FF secured 32 per cent of the first preference votes, but lost 80 seats. Their 300 city and county councillors are facing an electoral nightmare on June 5. On this showing they could lose a further 90 seats. FF strategists need to draw up a survival strategy.
My advice would be not to panic. They only hold one MEP in each of the four constituencies. They should still hold all of these. Either way it’s not the end of the world, relative to the importance of the next general election in retaining as many of their 70 Dáil seats as possible. For the party to recover they need to confront Bertie Ahern’s political legacy. He led them to an historic three consecutive general election victories. He was the essence of a politician’s politician — self effacing, modest, clever, likeable, available, hardworking, cunning, ordinary, and affable.
This was great while it lasted. “Never mind the quality, feel the width,” was the mantra. Record economic growth led to one million extra jobs. Each budget between 1997 and 2007 facilitated cuts in taxes and extra state spending from the proceeds of extra revenue. Bertie brought confidence from investors. He managed the partnership process, which supposedly gave us renowned stability.
We now find that a lot of these understandings, claims, and assurances were false. The price of appeasement and consensus was extra pay and public services that were unsustainable. Public expenditure rose from €20bn to €56bn. The €2bn spent on benchmarking epitomised the disregard for value for money. Bertie’s leadership style was to acquiesce without regard to the damage that was done to Irish competitiveness. This has contributed to our dreadful prospect of up to 500,000 unemployed.
The long term damage to the public finances was not confined to profligate spending. The stimulus measures for the construction industry over the past decade led to a property party. Prices of residential and commercial buildings and development land trebled. The tax proceeds from stamp duty, VAT, and construction activity amounted to over €7bn annually. There was a massive misjudgement of the real market requirements. So we now have over 90,000 houses for sale in a market that at most has a real demand for 40,000 houses per year.
This revenue has melted like snow on a ditch. Fifty five thousand people have lost their jobs in construction. New starts will come to a standstill this year and next. It may take years to restore stability to the property market. This is the classic boom to bust cycle. The unreal property bubble led to a mountain of personal debt. Instead of a ‘soft landing’ our economy is shuddering to a painful halt.
Bertie Ahern was the cheerleader of denial. He not only disregarded all warnings about a property bubble and consequent public finance fiasco but abused George Lee, David McWilliams, and others who correctly predicted gloom and doom. Bertie’s departure last April coincided with the first realisation by ordinary people of the truth.
Cowen should look the nation in the eye and accept the failings and failure of Bertie Ahern’s administration — a legacy of debt, wastage, and profligacy. Only when there is an acknowledgement of past errors can Fianna Fáil reverse their decline. After almost 12 years in government they have to accept responsibility for the mess.
The high profile culpable property developers and bankers were close to Bertie. The Galway Races tent embodied their culture. Fianna Fáil can and ultimately will recover. They must first disown Bertie, similar to the way they disowned Haughey. They cannot expect forgiveness from the public without contrition.
