A recently constructed report on the state of the Fianna Fáil organisation in urban areas throughout Ireland told party members something many already knew - cumann are largely inactive or non-existent in cities and large towns.
This, coupled with the near wipe out of Fianna Fáil city councillors in the last local elections, provides sobering lessons for a leadership that is facing the reality that the once invincible party machine may now be prone to extinction.
So what was Fianna Fáil HQ’s response to the need for a rejuvenation? Step forward Gerry ‘don’t burst the party’ Collins.
Collins was first elected a TD for Limerick West in 1967 and lost his European seat in 2004. At the time it was felt that he was too old, and beside a youthful Brian Crowley the Minister from the austere 1980s wilted.
However, like ABBA and bell bottoms he is back in vogue. The reconditioned Gerard who famously begged Albert Reynolds not to “burst the party apart” during the heave against Charlie Haughey in 1992, is now touring the country revamping the soldiers of destiny.
In the west he is ably assisted by Jackie Lally the regional co-ordinator. Neither man could be accused of being in the first flush of youth. It is the subject of much amusement among the party grassroots that when they met recently with party officers and elected representatives, the party officers made comments about getting rid of dinosaurs.
At the risk of Insider being accused of being ageist it should be noted that it is in Limerick West, where the Collins family has dominated for decades, where Fianna Fáil is at its strongest.
Jackie Lally was an astute strategist who plotted the rise of Mary O’Rourke and ran her constituency with breathtaking efficiency for many years.
As such Insider takes issue with the plan to rejuvenate, rather than stick with the generals chosen to gee up the soldiers.
Are FF rednecks or townies?
The biggest problem is the assumption that the party’s problems only exist in cities. Fianna Fáil does better in the city than in the Oranmore electoral area. The common assumption is that Fianna Fáil is a rural small farmers’ party but that ignores its working class city roots.
Among the media there has long been a myth that Fianna Fáil ‘don’t do urban’ and that the party is much more comfortable at the farm gate than on the corporation estate.
In Galway West the last townie elected as a Fianna Fáil TD was Bobby Molloy. The Mayor of Galway Cllr Michael J Crowe came close in 2007, but the townie FF vote has largely stayed with the former PD movement ).
It now appears that Fianna Fáil is being set up so that after the next General Election all potential obstacles to bringing in the former PDs will be removed.
It is assumed that Fianna Fáil will have reached rock bottom and that Independent TD Noel Grealish will be returned. If, as expected, the Soldiers of Destiny lose a seat then Dep Grealish can join and thereby ‘give back’ FF two seats in Galway West.
Independent councillors Declan McDonnell and Terry O’Flaherty can also join and they will ensure that Cllr Mary Leahy would not be a prospect for the party again on the east side.
The new PDs will flood the city organisation and the party in Galway city will be made up of the Crowes and the ex-PDs plus a handful of the old brigade. The party could then be a competitive force that might start to fight back and win a third seat for the following general election.
For Lally and Collins the plan is simple - close down the cumainn and the structures of the comhairle cheantair that exist around them. Then create a single member organisation organised around the three areas. All city local election candidates will then be selected by a simple ‘one member one vote system’ at conventions.
However, a number of difficulties exist with this proposal. First, in the eastern and central area of the city, most of the individual members will probably be recruited from GMIT and NUI, Galway. A wily young candidate could get selected without any links to the area and with no proven base in the community.
Even if the party finds a way around this obvious problem it is at the General Election selection convention that they will experience the greatest difficulties.
The city would be a one member one vote system and the county areas would select by the old Cumann structure according to the Jackie and Gerry group. However, in the last local elections the city was a stronger Fianna Fáil region than the Oranmore electoral area. Yet there is no purge of the Oranmore area cumanns which are in an equally bad mess as the city cumann.
The results of the last locals in the city showed the overall figure was 20.67 per cent. Broken down among the city wards as 26.67 per cent (Galway City Central ), 22.26 per cent (Galway City East ), and 15.57 per cent (Galway City West ), while Oranmore was 21.35 per cent.
The national average was 25 per cent contrasted with Connemara on a healthy 30.82 per cent. In the last General Election the national average was 42 per cent for Fianna Fáil but Galway West came in at 37.15 per cent.
The average was dragged down by the poor showing for Fianna Fáil in Oranmore and the below average level of support in the city. Tallies are notoriously inaccurate but estimates showed Connemara in excess of 45 per cent at the last general election, some three per cent above the national average.
If Fianna Fáil stays at around the 20 per cent mark then the unthinkable could occur in Galway West and the Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív could be left struggling for the final seat. No one member one vote or closure of cumanns is likely to revitalise the Fianna Fáil vote.
There are of course other factors that have affected membership of the party in the city; the party has never recovered from the formation of the PDs, the population of the city is very transient, Labour is dominant and has a good mixture of young and mature candidates.
The elephant in the room of course is how the urbanites view the current party leadership. After the townie versus bumpkin dust up in Fine Gael last week perhaps Fianna Fáil should think before it goes discriminating.
Insider will be taking a break for the summer but will be back in September to ruffle feathers and give readers the inside track on Galway politics.
