What next for the PD’s?

The Progressive Democrats took just 2.7% of the first-preference vote in the election. They need a new brand, policy and leader, says political reporter Paul O’Brien.

THEY’VE been here before. Even prior to the formal launch of the Progressive Democrats in December 1985, there were doubts about the party’s viability. On October 31 that year, as formation talks continued in accountant Paul Mackay’s Dublin 6 house, the man supposed to lead the new party, Des O’Malley, got cold feet. In his book on the history of the PDs, political journalist Stephen Collins tells how Mr O’Malley “wanted to call the whole thing off”, and how Mr Mackay later described the evening in his diary as a “Last Supper atmosphere”.

In 1998, the party suffered a humiliating result in a by election in the Cork South Central constituency, when its candidate Peter Kelly took just 2% of the vote and was eliminated on the first count. Despite being in government at the time, the party was described as being in need of intensive care by its former star, Pat Cox.