Pat should protect his left flank as Bertie looks to a northern alliance

NOBODY can really claim to be surprised that Sinn Féin emerged as the largest nationalist political party in the Northern Ireland Assembly election last week. It has been on the cards since the 2001 Westminster and local election when the party out-polled the SDLP.

However, the extent of Sinn Féin's victory this time was surprising and has real implications for at least two of the other political parties here in the Republic.

Pat Rabbitte, in particular, should take some time to consider the implications of last week's results for his Labour Party. Sinn Féin has had a further boost to the morale of its activists and has had another successful outing for the skills of its organisers. This will have a spillover effect on this side of the border and it is Labour which has most to fear from Sinn Féin making further advances here in the Republic.

The reality is that Sinn Féin's dramatic breakthrough in the 2002 Dáil election was at the expense of Labour and Fianna Fáil. In Dublin South Central, Aengus Ó Snodaigh took a seat that would otherwise have gone to Labour's Eric Byrne.

In Louth, Arthur Morgan took a seat for Sinn Féin because the vote share of Labour's Michael Bell collapsed. In Kerry North, Dick Spring was the ultimate casualty of Martin Ferris's success.

In Dublin South West, Sinn Féin's Sean Crowe and Labour's Pat Rabbitte each won a seat.

However, the tally figures show that Sinn Féin polled best in what used to be Rabbitte's old Democratic Left base. Rabbitte's vote appeal had shifted to many of the more well-to-do areas of the constituency and so he managed to hold his seat at Fine Gael's expense.

Sinn Féin is on the up. On the other hand Labour's recent electoral history has shown it to be stagnant. The party has not only been stagnant in percentage vote terms but has also been stagnant in terms of personalities.

By the time the next Dáil election comes around all of Labour's outgoing TDs will be over 50 years of age. Age of course, of itself, is no bar to political vigour.

Labour's real difficulty is that although it has only recently changed its leader, its Dáil representation looks stale. On average they were first elected to Dáil Eireann 16 years ago. All of Labour's candidates who ran for winnable seats in the 2002 general election, with one exception, were either outgoing deputies or deputies who had lost out in 1997 trying to get back into Leinster House.

Fianna Fáil had 18 first-time TDs elected in 2002.

Even Fine Gael, although suffering meltdown, managed to elect a handful of first-time deputies.

People like Olwyn Enright, John Deasy, Damien English and Paul Kehoe have added a dash of new colour to Fine Gael's reduced parliamentary party.

Labour has had no such injection of new blood, and badly needs new talent to come through in the next local elections. As Pat Rabbitte appears to have made a strategic decision to move Labour more to the centre he has taken the gamble of leaving the further left flank, where Democratic Left used to dwell, open to a Sinn Féin advance.

The Labour Party's growth under Pat Rabbitte is contingent on Fine Gael staying weak. At last weekend's mini-árd fheis, Fine Gael began again to show some signs of self-belief.

If Fine Gael manages to contain its decline, or even to reverse it, then Labour's room for electoral manoeuvre will be narrowed.

It is estimated that eight out of ten of Northern Ireland's new nationalist voters in recent elections have voted Sinn Féin. Here in the Republic, Sinn Féin's appeal is also growing among younger voters, not just in working class areas but also in the middle classes where the young have the luxury of protest voting.

With their republican tinge and movie star posture Sinn Féin have tapped into much of what would traditionally have been Labour's support base.

For as long as they are equivocal about winding down their military wing there will be a glass ceiling on Sinn Féin's ability to attract votes in the Republic. However, real decommissioning of the IRA and its arms, coupled with Sinn Féin becoming an established part of a Northern Ireland executive, could change that dynamic and reposition Sinn Féin here in the Republic. Labour has most to lose in that scenario.

By comparison Sinn Féin is less of a threat to Fianna Fáil than some suggest. When Sinn Féin won its first Dáil seat in recent times Cavan/Monaghan in 1997 it was at Fianna Fáil's expense. However, this has been the exception rather than the rule.

IT is no coincidence that in those places where Fianna Fáil is strongest, Sinn Féin is largely non-existent. In the five Cork constituencies, for example, where Fianna Fáil currently has ten of the 20 Dáil seats, Sinn Féin has only token local government representation.

Like all others, Sinn Féin will derive some benefit from the current unpopularity of the Government in next June's local and European elections.

However, in the medium and long term, Sinn Féin poses no real challenge to Fianna Fáil's ability to renew and reposition itself and to remain the largest party on the island. In fact, Sinn Féin's advances in last week's election may actually provide Fianna Fáil with an opportunity.

It may be the impetus for Fianna Fáil slowly and delicately to begin exploring the prospects for an entry into Northern Ireland politics.

Many in Fianna Fail, and some within the SDLP, have been thinking out loud in the last year or so about some kind of closer liaison, or even direct linkage, between the two parties with a view to a long-term 32-county electoral strategy.

No less a figure than Bertie Ahern suggested earlier this year that his party's national executive should take "a good look" at the issue of organising in the North.

In several TV studios last Thursday and Friday, the SDLP chairman, Alex Attwood, talked about the need for his party to re-examine and reflect on the consequences of the Assembly election result. Such a review cannot be authentic unless it includes a genuine consideration of the mutual benefits which might flow from a greater degree of co-operation with Fianna Fáil.

Fianna Fáil will be careful about taking the electoral gamble that goes with entry into a new, and at times peculiar, political market place. The politics, the media and the policy debate on both parts of this island increasingly overlap. In terms of political organisation, political leadership and policy positioning, Fianna Fáil brings much that could appeal to Northern Catholic voters.

It is now time for Fianna Fáil to take tentative steps consultative processes should begin, research and networking should be explored.

When the shell-shock at the scale of last week's losses has passed, Fianna Fáil may find many within the SDLP prepared to engage with them on this point.