Of the many incisive contributions to the Humbert Summer School in Ballina last week, the unscripted comments by Mr P.J. Mara were among the most interesting. The man who directed Fianna Fail's election campaign this year was unfairly depicted by Scrap Saturday some years ago as a kind of slavering idiot, eager to obey the whims of his political master.
He revealed himself to the summer school, however, as someone who has reflected deeply on the future shape of politics. Fianna Fail's market research for the last election showed that the qualities people sought in politicians were "the ability to change and the capacity to welcome change", he said.
"This is a lesson that we learned very early on. If we didn't communicate that as a party in the last election we would not be in business . . . any leader who doesn't recognise this demand for change in our society, and who doesn't communicate a capacity to embrace that change and welcome it, won't be elected."
The research also showed "a huge focus on the local in our society", Mr Mara continued. Rather than being weakened by globalisation and other changes in society, this tendency was becoming more and more important for people.
"Many people feel that the big-picture issues - the management of the economy, decommissioning, Northern Ireland - are much too complex for them to handle. They are increasingly demanding a focus on their own communities, on their own families, on their own businesses."
In the future, "people are going to dismiss public figures or politicians who talk in big-picture issues, who talk about the great constitutional problems, who talk about things in global terms.
"There is a genuine sense of a return to the local, and you see this right around the country in the development of local societies, historical societies and societies of one kind or the other, based in the community and rooted in the community."
The research also showed an increasing dissatisfaction with the traditional confrontational nature of politics, and an impatience with the media for concentrating too much on oppositional statements, Mr Mara continued.
"People had a perception about politicians that they were perhaps too focused on their own professional interests. People would say to me that we were not tearing into the government often enough [when Fianna Fail was in opposition], but this wasn't what the public was telling us through our research.
"They regarded this kind of tearing apart by politicians of each other as something they weren't really interested in. They regarded this as something that was especially peculiar to the body politic and had no real relevance to their lives. Any politician who engaged in that excessively would be punished by them."
Senator Joe O'Toole had referred to the fact that during the election campaign Fianna Fail had not talked much about getting an overall majority. This was a deliberate tactic, Mr Mara said.
"The overall majority was seen as this thing of politicians reaching out and trying to grab and hold on to something for themselves. The getting of an overall majority wasn't seen to be relevant or central to people's lives or to their communities.
"There was also a sense that we were asking people in Northern Ireland to power-share, and that when the political parties here talked about an overall majority this was contrary to that particular spirit."
Responding to Mr Mara, the Fine Gael TD, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, agreed that many people were less and less interested in oppositional politics. "But as a practising politician I can tell you that what gets coverage is oppositional politics and nothing else," she said.
The media were not interested in "the constructive politics of the National Economic and Social Forum, the constructive politics of working on committees, the reports the forum has produced on tackling long-term disadvantage and tackling rural exclusion. Really, it's not the story. The story is oppositional politics."