Disastrous 2002 election battle forced Fine Gael to ‘relearn politics’

FINE Gael had to “relearn the whole science of politics” after its disastrous general election performance of 2002, its director of elections has admitted.

Frank Flannery said the polling day massacre, when Fine Gael lost 23 of its 54 seats in the Dáil, “appeared to almost presage the destruction of our party”.

Mr Flannery was speaking at a Fine Gael election rally in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, on Monday night.

He sought to remind supporters of the 2002 meltdown so that they would be determined not to repeat the experience.

He said the 2002 defeat “came from events which had their seeds in 1987”, when a damaging leadership row between Peter Barry, John Bruton and the eventual winner, Alan Dukes, resulted in “party at war stuff” for 15 years.

“Our eye was off the ball politically, which led us from being a great political party, a dominant force in Irish politics for a while, to losing 23 seats in an election,” Mr Flannery said. “We lost an awful lot of what was the best in our party on that terrible day in May 2002.”

To reinforce the point, he showed supporters images of some of the party’s crestfallen defeated candidates in 2002, including Mr Dukes himself, Alan Shatter, Nora Owen and Brian Hayes.

Mr Flannery said the most important event since was the restoration of unity after Enda Kenny’s election as leader in June 2002.

“No sooner was he picked, than he and the other three people who contested (Phil Hogan, Richard Bruton and Gay Mitchell) went into a room and collectively agreed how they were going to go forward, and it was in that sequence of events, and in that room, that Fine Gael at its hour of greatest need, and its hour of greatest humiliation, found the model and the methodology to begin the reconstruction.”

The rebuilding since then had taken a lot of effort, Mr Flannery said.

“Insofar as possible, we left the past and the old methodology behind, tried to understand how modern politics works.”

He claimed the party could aim for between 54 and 60 seats in the election, meaning if Labour brought in 22 to 25 seats, the parties would have between 76 and 85 in total, which should see them returned to power.