FINE GAEL’S ambitious aim to break the 70-seat barrier in the next election could make life difficult for its current representatives in the Dáil and a senior official had to be “bad enough of a bastard” to deal with that, the party’s director of organisation, Frank Flannery, has said.
Addressing the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal yesterday, he pointed out that the party had gone from 31 to 51 Dáil seats in the last general election in 2007.
“In the next election we will be driving from 51 seats north to, whatever, 70s, and, if we are extraordinarily lucky, even well into the 70s,” he said.
“That is going to make life uneasy for many of the 51 that we have. Because if you are going for a second seat or a third seat and you don’t get it, the person that loses out may not be the new person you are running and may be one of the existing [TDs].”
Mr Flannery said this was a huge problem. “Therefore, you must have a professional organisation, which is why Fine Gael has this role of director of organisation and why I am in it because I am bad enough of a bastard and tough enough to make really unpopular decisions,” he said.
“That has its own impact from time to time, which sometimes will take the form of an apoplectic member of the front bench.”
Mr Flannery declined to comment on issues relating to his recent removal from his additional post as director of elections following controversial comments he made indicating the possibility of entering government with Sinn Féin.
“I think running the organisation of a political party is one of the most professional tasks there is,” he said. “The golden age of amateurism was never golden: it was always chaotic.”
Mr Flannery added: “That isn’t to say the professional organisation needs to be divorced from the political apparatus; in fact that would be a huge weakness.
“It is very important that the political players, elected officers, who have responsibility for policy and all of that, also must be very much in tune with what the organisation is doing.”
According to Mr Flannery, “there is an awful tendency among TDs to look to the future with a view to a comfortable life”.
Irish Timescolumnist and former Fianna Fáil political organiser Noel Whelan rejected Mr Flannery's contention that Fine Gael was now the largest party in the State but acknowledged it was "by far the largest party in local government".
