The Fianna Fáil party headquarters in Kerry North, a listed Tralee building, is to be sold to provide what sources describe as "a war chest" for the next local elections in the constituency.
The decision was disclosed amid warnings at a specially convened meeting of party activists in Kerry that the party nationally faced great difficulties "and serious challenges" at the next local elections.
At the meeting, attended by about 130 people, at the Brandon Hotel on Friday night, Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan issued a strong warning Fianna Fáil nationally faced "an uphill battle" in 2009.
The headquarters, a Georgian house at Day Place, is a protected building and it is also the childhood home of former Fianna Fáil TD Denis Foley.
The building is held in trust by three members of the Roger Casement cumann, among them Mr Foley. Amid a discussion about the difficulties facing the party in Kerry North, Mr Foley told the meeting that agreement had been reached to sell the building.
The meeting heard concerns about slippage in the Fianna Fáil vote in the constituency.
In 2004, Fianna Fáil suffered the loss of a council seat to Sinn Féin, while the general election last year saw the party's first preference votes drop to an all time low of 26 per cent in the Kerry north constituency.
This is being attributed to the failure to run a candidate from the Listowel area.
Both candidates, Norma Foley, a councillor, and sitting TD Thomas McEllistrim, were from Tralee. Outlining the strategy to regain the Fianna Fáil council seat, Mr Dorgan said major funding was needed in the constituency.
Fianna Fáil has for some time been embarrassed by the modern offices of Sinn Féin in both Tralee and Listowel.
Party bosses in the wider north Kerry area and in Dublin have been seeking to sell the historic Day Place building for some years to provide a modern headquarters for the party, but had failed until now to secure agreement.
In need of costly repair, it has been little used in the past decade.
Listowel Fianna Fáil councillor Maria Gorman, a leading party activist and former director of elections who attended Friday night's meeting, said the party badly needed "a presence" in Listowel in the form of an office, particularly now that west Limerick was joined with Kerry North.
Two years ago, auctioneers said the building would fetch up to €700,000.