Politicians of all parties and none have a lot to mull over during their break, as the year ahead promises to be even more frenetic than the one just ending.
Enda Kenny is probably more in need of a break than any other member of the Dáil. He endured a punishing year which saw his Government lurch from one political crisis to the next despite, or maybe because of, the fact that the country left the EU-IMF bailout on time.
The paradox confronting his Coalition is that it retained a reasonable level of public support for three years as it implemented the tough decisions required to meet the bailout targets.
As the fruits of those decisions began to become clear with the economy bouncing back faster than expected and unemployment falling significantly, the Coalition suddenly had €1 billion to give away in the October budget.
Instead of getting the hoped-for gratitude from the electorate the opposite happened. Plummeting poll ratings reflected a rising tide of disillusionment with all the established parties and a surge in support for Independents and Sinn Féin. The challenge facing Kenny and his colleagues is how to reverse the tide, if it is not already too late.
Some Fine Gael TDs have been muttering about changing their leader as the only way of out of their predicament.
They might do well to reflect on how that strategy worked for the Labour Party back in June when TDs panicked after a dreadful performance in the local and European elections and the pressure forced Eamon Gilmore to step down as tánaiste and party leader.
Drifting down The party got a little bit of a bounce in the immediate aftermath of the change with new leader Joan Burton scoring well in the initial polls and party support
increasing modestly. However, by the time the Christmas season kicked in Labour was back where it started, winning just 6 per cent in the most recent Irish Times poll and the new leader drifting down the popularity stakes.
Changing leaders in response to plummeting poll ratings in advance of an election is a natural response from politicians worried they are going to lose their seats. It happened in Australia last year when Labour MPs dumped Julia Gillard and brought back Kevin Rudd as prime minister as the last throw of the dice to save themselves from electoral disaster. It didn’t work there and is unlikely to do so here.
Fine Gael TDs have an example to hand nearer to home. Back in 2001 the party, then in opposition, was treading water under John Bruton. One inveterate anti- leadership deputy spread panic in the ranks by forecasting that if Bruton remained leader the party would end up with just 40 seats.
In the event Bruton was removed after a bitter heave and Michael Noonan was elected in his place. After all that the party ended up with 33 seats in 2002 and Noonan resigned immediately.
It is hardly surprising that some Fine Gael TDs are beginning to feel the strain. The party won 76 seats in the last election and going on poll ratings at least 30 of them are now in grave danger. If that number decide to throw in their lot with the hardcore anti-Kenny faction in the parliamentary party, the leader will have a serious problem.
Joan Burton is in a very different position. Her TDs gave vent to their insecurities last July and regardless of how the polls move between now and the election her job is secure.
The poll ratings are now so bad for Labour that a mood of resignation has taken hold among TDs although some of them still dare to hope that, if they can last until the spring of 2016, continuing good news on the economy will save their bacon.
On the Opposition side of the Dáil, Micheál Martin has had his critics in Fianna Fáil; but while the party’s poll ratings have been unspectacular the good performance in the local elections has helped him consolidate his position.
Many in the party believe that when the general election comes around they can repeat the local-election performance, where they ended up as the biggest party. Even if that is not repeated, Fianna Fáil should be able to gain a significant number of seats.
Gerry Adams’s position as Sinn Féin leader is totally secure, in spite of occasional speculation that he is holding back the party’s advance in the Republic. For a start there is no evidence of that; and, in any case, nobody in the party is ever going to challenge his leadership.
U-turn
Sinn Féin has profited from the Government’s mistakes and from its own involvement in the water protests, even if it did a significant U-turn on the issue.
The Mairía Cahill controversy may have put a ceiling to the party’s apparently inexorable rise and polls tend to overestimate its potential election vote. Nonetheless, Sinn Féin will make substantial gains in the next election – the only question being how great.
The really wild card is the rise of the Independents and smaller parties. That has been the big political development of the party year and the really big question now is whether the mainstream parties can claw back some of the lost ground over the next year or so.
If the hard left gets its act together by running a slate of approved candidates and some of the Independents combine to form a national movements of sorts, the established order will face a genuine challenge.