Labour need hard work and prayers to make Rabbitte’s dream come true

PAT Rabbitte has developed temporary amnesia.

It's the obligatory press conference before the parliamentary party meeting kicks off, and a reporter has asked him how many seats Labour will aim for at the next election.

Rabbitte says his immediate target is to restore the Labour seat in Clonmel, the birthplace of the party and venue for the meeting. "Other than that, I can't remember the targets," he says with a knowing smile.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has no such problem.

His party, which holds 32 Dáil seats, is aiming for 30 more. But then it's easy to be openly ambitious when you're the bigger of the partners in a pre-election pact. History has shown that the bigger partner often wins seats at the other's expense.

Indeed, when Rabbitte sought and obtained party backing for the pact, this was one of the fears of delegates who opposed it.

Although party sources will later say Labour is looking to win 14 extra seats, it's dangerous to state targets that could come back to haunt. Especially when some of the party's most-established vote-getters have had enough deputies Sean Ryan and Joe Sherlock are two who won't be standing again.

Given those retirements, and the attention drawn to the age profile of the parliamentary party, the Labour leader is keen to stress "a new generation of candidates" is coming through.

He singles out Dominic Hannigan, who performed strongly in the Meath by-election in March, and who the party hopes will take a seat when the five-seat constituency splits into two three-seaters.

At the press conference, Rabbitte sits flanked by four local councillors, one of whom Darren Ryan is just 23.

Phil Prendergast, another of the councillors at the table, enjoyed formidable local support as an Independent, and could offer Labour its best chance of taking a Dáil seat here.

Rabbitte won't be drawn on which of the four councillors he would prefer to see running. But he's happy to talk about things like the economy, his preference not to govern with the PDs, his dislike of the Government's "whispering campaign" against Eddie Hobbs, and his disdain for Michael McDowell.

The Justice Minister is compared to a baby "banging his rattle to be allowed into the alternative government" and a spoiled brat: "Michael McDowell reminds me of the pampered boy from the posh estate who wants to play football with the ordinary kids, and if they don't play by his rules, he takes his ball and he goes off whinging."

But the best image is one that Rabbitte tantalisingly fails to develop, muttering it almost as an afterthought. He has just mentioned the German elections, and the "iron lady" of that country's politics, Angela Merkel: "It'd be a good place for Michael McDowell now, come to think of it" Whatever could he mean? As he speaks, the hotel sound system is playing Ennio Morricone's On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Rabbitte clearly has a view of what his political heaven would look like, and there would be no place in it for McDowell. But with today's poll showing Labour support slipping somewhat, it's going to take an awful lot of work, and more than a few prayers.