1 Saying no to November
Should Fine Gael have gone ahead with a November election instead of waiting until February?
A November poll seemed to have everything going for it at the time.
There was the feel-good factor from the October budget plus the tactical advantage of catching the Opposition and prospective Independents unaware with a snap election.
The problem was the Labour Party. It felt the recovery was not strong enough to sustain a bid to retain sufficient seats and believed a later election would give it more time to shore up support. In the end, it was Labour opposition that put paid to the November election.
Would it have made any difference? It is hard to say. And a little moot. Parties have called snap elections before – Fianna Fáil under Charles Haughey in 1989, for example – and ran into unanticipated outcomes.
To have persevered with a November date, Fine Gael would have had to have been cold and ruthless with its putative coalition partners in Labour.
But, on the whole, a November election would probably have helped Fine Gael.
2 Let’s keep the recovery going
There has been far too much emphasis on the slogan. But it was not a classic and it will not be seen again. The Fine Gael message just did not strike the right pitch.
It seemed the party had a tin ear, for example, to those who were not feeling the effects of the recovery. And explaining that Fine Gael was not abandoning those people proved too hard to do.
3 Blunders by Fine Gael on key policies
There were key Fine Gael policy platforms that had not been fully thought out for foreseeable blowback.
The first was the decision to abolish the universal social charge. Focus-group research had told all parties the USC was reviled. But the problem for Fine Gael was the perception that its promise to abolish it favoured the rich.
Its formula of a 5 per cent clawback for those earning more than €100,000 a year and for loss of tax credits for those earning more than €70,000 was difficult to explain.
Other parties had derided Sinn Féin for years about its plans for a wealth tax for people earning more than €100,000. But now Sinn Féin could crow that Fine Gael was introducing its own wealth tax.
Sinn Féin also struck an early blow when it got the other large parties to back down on their projections on the exact extent of the fiscal space. That was an extraordinary moment, marking a maturity in its economic policies.
4 The leaders’ debates on television
The big trick about a leaders’ debate is that it is more important not to lose than to win. If you survive without a massive blunder you will be okay. Otherwise the impact can be marginal.
There is no doubt Micheál Martin outperformed his rivals over the course of the three televised debates, showing himself to be more combative and quicker on his feet than his opponents. In the seven-way debate, however, this was less clear- cut. The leaders of the three smaller parties – Richard Boyd Barrett, Stephen Donnelly and Lucinda Creighton – all acquitted themselves well.
The Social Democrats, in particular, seem to have upped their profile as a result, but not enough to increase their seat tally. They were unable to add to the three seats they had at the dissolution of the Dáil.
Creighton was competent as always but it did not save Renua from failure to win a single seat.
Neither Enda Kenny nor Joan Burton made any serious mistakes but neither were convincing, with Kenny in particular looking out of sorts and not fully coherent. Burton, however, had a good final debate.
Gerry Adams was very “shouty” in the first debate, better in the second and poor in the third.
Kenny took a bit of a body blow when Miriam O’Callaghan, in the final debate, started giving specific examples from Fine Gael’s own tax calculator which showed the very rich would fare much better than a married couple on a relatively low income.
In retrospect, the performances reflected the momentum, or the lack of it, behind the four main party leaders.
5 Whingers
The formal campaign lasted only three weeks, but in reality it started six months ago. By the final week everyone was running out of steam and had very little new to say.
As a result, some blunders took on a life of their own. Kenny’s portrayal of naysayers in Mayo as “whingers” might have been acceptable for a non-politician but for a leader of a political party it was damaging. Not quite as damaging as Bertie Ahern’s “suicide” comments, but it was a negative event, nonetheless. He apologised too late and it acted as a drag in the last days of the campaign.
The other significant gaffes were the work of Adams, who managed to unravel a lot of Pearse Doherty’s good work in the course of a series of disastrous radio interviews in which the Sinn Féin leader was simply shocking when it came to detail.
Adams was skewered by Seán O’Rourke, Brian Dobson and Richard Crowley. The interviews were not hostile but the detail stumped him.
In the last leaders’ debate, he was still uncertain when quizzed about detail by O’Callaghan. It was compounded by him asking Kenny: “Who is Senator Cahill?”
