It never seemed likely that Dick Spring would resign his North Kerry Dail seat along with the party leadership. The Spring family will never lightly bring to an end a remarkable political dynasty that began in 1943 when Mr Spring's father, Dan Spring, was first elected to the Dail.
He held the seat, sometimes against formidable odds, until his retirement from politics in 1981, when he was succeeded by Dick Spring. That long service gave the family a strong emotional link with the seat and to break it would be an enormous wrench.
Should Dick Spring retire from the Dail at any future election, his sister, Maeve Spring, would be the obvious successor. She is a member of Kerry County Council and Tralee Urban Council and has been his constituency secretary for many years.
During his busy international schedule as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the last government, Maeve Spring was her brother's eyes and ears in the constituency, and was rapidly on the line to Iveagh House if any local matter needed his immediate attention. One local source described her as "a second Labour TD in everything but name."
The early part of Dan Spring's political life was in striking contrast to the world of the government jet and high-powered advisers that was his son's lot as Minister for Foreign Affairs five decades later.
Dan Spring had a high local profile as a trade union official and former county footballer when he cycled through the towns and villages of North Kerry canvassing for votes in the 1943 election. His first stop was at a bridge near the village of Castlemaine, where he pasted the first "Vote Spring" posters.
The new Labour TD's post-election notice in the Kerryman reflected the times: "I wish to thank sincerely all those who, by their subscriptions, enabled me to defray the costs of my election and those who so generously lent me ponies and traps and other modes of conveyance on election day and enabled me to facilitate a little the very many supporters who had long distances to travel to polling booths."
Dan Spring served briefly as a junior minister in the late 1950s, and he was known to be bitterly disappointed when the then Labour leader, Brendan Corish, failed to restore him to ministerial office in the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition which came into power in 1973.
He had a few close calls during his long reign, particularly in 1969, when North Kerry voters looked with scepticism on Labour's move to the left and the acquisition of high-profile candidates such as Conor Cruise O'Brien, David Thornley and Justin Keating. He strongly opposed the party's two-candidate strategy in each constituency, arguing that it would lose him his seat.
He was threatened with expulsion, but he was shown to have read correctly the electoral trends when he retained his seat, while the party suffered losses elsewhere.
"Are you going to expel me?" he asked Labour's then general secretary, Mr Brendan Halligan, with a justified note of triumphalism, as the party struggled to come to terms with its failure to make the hoped-for breakthrough.
Dick Spring was working in the United States and had just married when he flew home to help his father in his last election campaign in 1977. His cream suit, long hair and beard caused a stir at the North Kerry hustings, and Dan Spring, ever a practical man, ordered him off the canvass. Despite the swing against the outgoing coalition, Dan Spring again survived.
Nothing had prepared the family and the local organisation for Dick Spring's four-vote brush with losing his Dail seat as Labour leader and outgoing Tanaiste a decade later. Nothing would ever again be left to chance and his reshaping of the local organisation into a well-oiled machine mirrored his rebuilding of the party nationally over the past decade.
Dick Spring's father died in 1988, and his mother, Anna Spring, a key figure in the local organisation for the best part of 50 years, died last September.
Despite his decision to retire from the front line of national politics yesterday, nobody is in any doubt that the 54-year family dynasty will continue in North Kerry.