Simon Coveney's sweeping victory in the Cork South Central by-election is a big, but necessary, boost for John Bruton and Fine Gael. It is something of a leveller for Fianna Fail. And even though by-elections traditionally have few implications for the next general election, there are signs already that the post-mortems will have repercussions in most parties.
It seemed to come as less of a surprise to Fine Gael than Fianna Fail that Simon Coveney had an impressive 8 percentage points lead over Sinead Behan on the first count. He thereby confounded the findings of the two professional opinion polls conducted during the last 11 days of the campaign which showed the two leading candidates neck-and-neck on first-preference votes.
Mr Coveney scored an emphatic victory on all counts on Saturday. He started 3,554 votes ahead of his rival, Ms Behan, on the first count and ended up, on the third, 6,851 votes ahead. He handsomely won the seat held by his late father, Hugh Coveney, up to his death in a cliff fall last March.
Apart from his personal triumph in such circumstances, Simon Coveney's victory is a huge boost for Fine Gael and particularly for John Bruton. It is generally acknowledged by party members that the loss of the by-election would have had a devastating effect on his leadership. It would have raised, over time, the thorny question of whether Mr Bruton should lead the party into the next election.
The victory, instead, has presented the party with an able, articulate, young new TD and an increase from 30.57 per cent to 37.70 per cent in its first-preference vote since last year's general election. Most important of all, at a national level it has given space to the party.
Notwithstanding the charisma of the Coveney name in Cork, Sinead Behan and Fianna Fail must be particularly disappointed with their performance. She polled 12,658 to Coveney's 16,212 on the first count, broke no new ground on transfers and witnessed a massive 13.19 percentage point drop in the party's share of the vote - from 42.62 per cent to 29.43 per cent - since the 1997 general election.
The Fianna Fail leadership made a huge investment in the campaign at a time when the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Government and the party have had record-breaking ratings in a succession of opinion polls over the past six months. The result, therefore, will act as something of a leveller for the party. It will force strategists to think twice about the implications of such ratings in between general elections and, indeed, the belief held by some in the leadership that Fianna Fail can win an overall majority next time.
Toddy O'Sullivan produced a very respectable performance of 19per cent of the vote, which would yield a Labour seat in a general election. He increased the party's vote by 10.38 percentage points on the 1997 election. He even surpassed Labour's performance in 1992 when he topped the poll in the constituency with 18.02 per cent of the vote.
The result guarantees the 63-year-old veteran the right, if he wishes, to contest the next general election for Labour in three years' time.
Dan Boyle of the Green Party polled satisfactorily in the by-election. He increased his share of the vote from 6.58 per cent last year to 8.05 per cent, although his actual first-preference vote dropped from 3,622 to 3,461.
Henry Cremin's performance as the Sinn Fein candidate, 2.69 per cent, would seem to be an accurate reflection of the party's national vote. Sinn Fein's vote has stabilised at 3 per cent in the last couple of opinion polls this year. The party did not run a candidate in the constituency in last year's general election.
The biggest loser in the by-election was the Progressive Democrats. Their candidate, Pater Kelly, got 971 votes, less than Sinn Fein. The PD vote dropped from 4.19 per cent in last year's general election to 2.26 per cent in a constituency where Pearse Wyse and Pat Cox MEP held a secure seat.
The result is already leading to some soul-searching in the party about its future. It was noticeable on RTE's This Week programme yesterday that old opponents Pat Cox and Sen Helen Keogh were agreed about the need for a revitalising strategy to save the party from oblivion.