A crowded political agenda - and an untimely death

Drapier/An Insider's Guide to Politics: Polls, Donegal, cafe bars, Prof Drumm, a TV series on Haughey - the political agenda…

Drapier/An Insider's Guide to Politics: Polls, Donegal, cafe bars, Prof Drumm, a TV series on Haughey - the political agenda is crowded, but first the decencies at the untimely death of Seán Doherty.

Untimely it was, at a relatively young age and with no warning. The grief of his lovely and loyal wife, Maura, and of his four bright, fine daughters is immense. To them he was not a man of legend; he was a living father, husband, friend.

A sudden death is hugely traumatic for those left behind, and the Doherty family will find their recovery long and difficult. Our hearts in full measure go out to them all, and to his wider family.

Seán was a man of great ability and great promise. His life can be broken up into so many segments; early Garda life, entry into politics, his career as minister for justice, then his quieter period as cathaoirleach of the Seanad, and later his membership of two Dáil committees to which he gave great service and which allowed his forensic skills and bright intelligence to work for the State. There was no doubt it was his better period in political life.

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Then his decision to retire, and his commercial ventures in his native area which were proving so successful.

At all the obsequies, Drapier noted that it was his own community and family at Cootehall that ran the show, so to speak, despite the many political luminaries who thronged there. Seán was "their man".

A last word on the matter. Drapier is an amateur historian and well used to revisionist techniques, but the speed with which revisionism was played after his death was quite amazing.

In print and in speech, with remarkable congruence of ideas, the spinners were out, spinning their version of events at a particular time.

Much of this was pure fabrication, but there is no doubt that the truth about a particular period will come out and perhaps can be part of, not the legend, but the true persona of the late Seán Doherty.

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What do we make of the cafe bar saga? The publicans played their hand with Fianna Fáil with great force. But, at the end of the day, the ingenuity of Michael McDowell came to the fore.

A very quick conversion from formulating the idea of cafe bars to the liberalisation of the restaurant trade (long a tenet of PD policy) was an amazing volte-face, but it worked in that he slightly, but only slightly, mollified the Fianna Fáil party, but in turn every restaurant can now in effect become a cafe bar.

McDowell went to the Fianna Fáil parliamentary meeting on Tuesday evening, and it was indeed an interesting occasion. The room on Floor 5 was thronged. Usually there has been a huge turnout like that only at times of attempted coups or votes on leadership. But for McDowell the troops were out.

How did he handle it? He was nervous but bullish at the same time. He came with a fine shield in Noel Grealish, PD deputy for Galway, who got a great cheer when he came in. Michael himself, when he had finished his speech, got a polite clap, as he later got when he was leaving.

Fianna Fáil backbenchers were mollified but also a trifle miffed, and Drapier feels that many would have liked a bloody and triumphant outcome at what was a contrived and controlled issue.

The most interesting part of the meeting was when the Minister was summing up. He cautioned them "that to resist all change, for all the wrong reasons, would be very bad", and there were many who knew exactly what he meant. The breakup of Fianna Fáil and the PDs is now quite clear.

So what are to be the great causes? Not Aer Rianta, because the public don't care one bit who owns and runs the terminals as long as they can get away quickly.

It will not be on cafe bars because the public would just laugh uproariously at that type of pretext.

But it will be on the idea of reform. The mantra of the PDs was be-radical-or-redundant, and for the breakup and the next election their slogan will be reform-or-be-redundant. It is a potent message and will cover health reforms and legislative reforms in all areas.

PDs will say they wanted to do so and so but were not allowed by Fianna Fáil. There is danger in this for the major party, but no doubt Bertie Ahern is well aware of it.

And now to the polls. Make no mistake about it, the results were good for the proposed Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

Drapier knows it is boring to keep repeating that polls are just a snapshot in time, but that is what they are. But they held out more than crumbs of comfort to the proposed alternative.

They now need to develop policies and put them before the electorate in a sequence, well before the general election. It will not be enough to shout their slogan "Time for a change".

The next poll showed us that voters still wanted Fianna Fáil in any proposed coalition. The final poll on Europe echoed everything we all know.

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For the Tánaiste, there was a real breakthrough this week in that, after much huffing and puffing, Prof Drumm has agreed to become head of the Health Services Executive. Mary Harney deserved a break, and the public will want to see both Prof Drumm and the Minister for Health working together to bring about long-needed changes.

Reform again? The Hanly report, two years on, still looks dangerous and divisive. Of course, reform is necessary, but will it be grasped?

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And still the North limps on. The public is battle-weary of the saga, and it is a source of wonderment as to how the main actors in the drama have kept their optimism and their energy levels up. The dreary steeples remain dreary. The people in the North brace themselves for the marching season, and politicians from all quarters wait for the IRA response to Gerry Adams.