OPINION:A vote by the PDs today to continue some form of shadow existence would be a mistake, says Stephen Collins
KARL MARX'S dictum that "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce" will certainly be an apt description of the Progressive Democrats if the membership decides today to continue to exist, leaderless and rudderless, at a time of national crisis.
There is an uncanny symmetry about the current political situation and the party's birth almost 23 years ago. Then, as now, the country was in the grip of a deep economic and political crisis, political leaders were floundering in search of answers, and a variety of interest groups pursued their own ends with an utter disregard for the common good.
The PDs made an immediate impact on that dismal political scene and, in the years that followed, played a decisive role in the transformation of Ireland. Yet then, as now, they were vilified by political opponents and caricatured by a significant section of the media, who consistently misrepresented their aims and objectives.
Widely portrayed as the party of the rich, the PDs in fact focused on lifting the crippling tax burden on middle-income earners and ordinary workers. The rich, who have all sorts of ways of avoiding tax, never had much time for the PDs. The well-off, including our super-rich tax exiles, have always tended to favour Fianna Fáil.
While it is ironic that the PDs are winding up at a time when the country badly needs fresh thinking and the kind of political courage displayed by Des O'Malley and Mary Harney in 1985, the party is now far too weak to offer any credible solutions.
A vote today to continue some form of shadow existence on a life-support machine of State subvention would be a sad end to a party that was at the centre of national politics.
It is hard for some of the enthusiastic members to accept that the PDs have no future, whatever they decide today. The result of the general election determined that.
With hindsight, it is clear that the decision to go back into office with Fianna Fáil after the 2002 general election was the decisive wrong turn on the road to oblivion.
In that election the PDs had once again confounded their critics, doubling their number of seats to eight, and the future seemed assured.
During the campaign Harney insisted that the PDs would not go into government if Fianna Fáil won an overall majority, as opinion polls indicated it might. As it transpired, Fianna Fáil won 81 seats and could easily have governed with the aid of a gaggle of friendly independents, but the PDs jumped at Bertie Ahern's offer to continue in coalition - despite having no political leverage.
The alternative was to go into opposition along with a deeply demoralised Fine Gael, which had lost 20 seats. That course held less obvious attractions but it represented a clear opportunity for an energised party to make its voice heard and even possibly engage in a reverse takeover of Fine Gael.
However, the party went back into office and participated in what may come to be regarded as one of the worst governments in the State's history. The key mistake of the PDs, whose core value was low tax, was to participate in a government that recklessly increased public spending to unsustainable levels.
The benchmarking award to the public service was a spectacular example of the profligacy of the post-2002 Fianna Fáil-PD government. These pay increases coincided with a rapid expansion of the public service to meet the demand for better health and education systems. It was paid for by a construction boom which delivered huge but unsustainable tax revenues. That boom would turn to bust was inevitable; the only question about it was the timing.
Instead of trying to get Fianna Fáil to apply the brakes before the economy spun out of control, the PD ministers opted to implement legal and administrative reform.
Michael McDowell did a good job as minister for justice, tightening up criminal law and attempting to introduce reforms in areas ranging from human rights to defamation.
Harney moved to the Department of Health and set about tackling long-standing structural problems that stood in the way of a more efficient service. She has had some success, most notably in the new cancer strategy and improvements in AE departments. However, the slow rate of progress and the interminable problems in negotiating a new consultants' contract and getting the Health Service Executive to function properly mired her in continuing controversy.
The slide towards the 2007 election disaster was accompanied by a squabble between Harney and McDowell over the party leadership in the summer of 2006. McDowell ultimately took over the reins of leadership in the autumn of that year, but his inept handling of the controversy over payments to Bertie Ahern proved to be disastrous.
After the earlier abandonment of the party's core economic values, McDowell's inability to get his party to take a stand on the issue of standards in public office meant that the PDs went naked into the general election of 2007.
Electoral disaster was always an accident waiting to happen - given how close the party had come to it twice before - and it finally caught up with it in 2007.
The party has limped on since the election, which saw it return to the Dáil with just two seats, but it never had a viable future.
Some of the members were unhappy with the way the leadership decided to throw in the towel without consultation, but there was probably no easy way to break the news that the party is over.
While the achievements of the PDs over the past 23 years will be a matter of debate for some time, there is no taking away from the courage and patriotism of the party's founders. They truly did seek to do the State some service, which is more than can be said of some of their detractors.
It may be appropriate to quote the Edwardian Liberal politician Augustine Birrell, who himself epitomised the adage that all political careers end in failure. Summing up the fate of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he wrote: "Politicians seldom desire gratitude, and never get it."
The PDs certainly know the feeling.