Rabbitte may be preaching to converted in public meetings

WHO would be the leader of a political party desperate to return to power? It’s close to 10pm on a wet, miserable Thursday night in Dublin, and most sensible people have finished work hours ago.

Labour’s Pat Rabbitte, however, is fielding questions from party members with differing opinions at a public meeting in the Regency Airport Hotel.

One member says it is a PD-Fianna Fáil coalition running the country, and not the other way round. Another member, however, sees it differently: the PDs are “a very ephemeral party, like snow on a rope”.