You need a credible alternative if you want to change a government

THERE’S a story going around that Bertie Ahern isn’t the man he was a year ago.

He's tired, they say. His morale is shattered by being booed at sports events. His personal life is in turmoil. He spends his time mooching alone around Drumcondra. He's convinced the electorate will never forgive him for the promises he made at the last election but never kept.

It's true that electorates have long memories. The Irish electorate never forgave Dick Spring for going into coalition with Fianna Fáil and waited for years for the opportunity to vent their anger. The British people bided their time after Black Wednesday until they could throw out the Tories.

It's tempting to apply these precedents to Bertie Ahern's administration.

A triumphant return to power; a sudden souring of the relationship; a government which suddenly can do no right and which lurches on towards eventual defeat.

That scenario might very well play out. Or not. It is oft-repeated that elections are lost by governments rather than won by opposition, but tell that to Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock. To oust a government, you need a credible alternative.

Which is the first thing Fianna Fáil has in its favour. There is no government-in-waiting. Enda Kenny has sunk without trace. Those who know him say he's a very nice man, the life and soul of the party. But if you're going to be a nice politician, you have to be a heavyweight nice politician, like Garret FitzGerald or, indeed, Bertie himself.

Kenny was elected as an antidote to the heavyweight bruiser, Michael Noonan. It's hard to credit that a party with Fine Gael's past could have so mis-analysed their election defeat so badly. Michael Noonan didn't lose the election because he was a bruiser, but because he turned his firepower on the wrong target. Fine Gael canvassers took an awful time on the doorsteps about the hepatitis issue. If ever a party needed a leader with charisma and high name recognition, it was after that election. By electing Kenny they showed that they'd drawn the wrong lessons.

The election also left them without a front bench. No party can afford to lose parliamentarians like Alan Dukes, Nora Owen and Alan Shatter. Think of the monumental tussles between John O'Donoghue and Nora Owen, successive Ministers for Justice who shadowed one another almost to the political death. In comparison, Michael McDowell a juicy political target has had a free run in the same portfolio.

Labour has a different problem. Pat Rabbitte has enjoyed a ludicrously easy ride so far, but his position is based on a paradox as yet unexploited by the media. To keep his profile high he has to slam Fianna Fáil. But like Dick Spring before him, his best chance of power is through a coalition deal with that same party. So he must condemn FF from a height, hope he strikes a 'get them out' chord with the people, then do an undignified about-face after the election.

So far he has refused to rule out going into government with Bertie, but that will become more difficult. Answers will be demanded during the next election campaign and a failure to give unequivocal guarantees that he will use his post-election strength to kick out Fianna Fáil will result in a feeding frenzy which will damage Labour badly.

Rabbitte may try to sell Labour as a more effective controlling influence on Fianna Fáil than the Progressive Democrats; a terrier instead of a poodle. Whether the electorate will settle for that remains to be seen. If he does a Dick Spring on it and puts FF back into power, he can enjoy five years as Minister for Finance in exchange for taking a big electoral hit thereafter. Possibly at this time of his career it's a price he'd pay for a stint at the top table.

With these weaknesses in the opposition, the next election is there for Fianna Fáil to win. Perhaps spurred on by a sense of having nothing to lose, the present crop of ministers seem to be vying with one another to make their mark. In significant ways Ireland will be a different place in four years from now.

Seamus Brennan will have presided over the reduction of the road death rate to normal European levels. Brennan realised that gory ads don't change people's habits as effectively as proper law enforcement. You can now drive from one end of the country to the other at the correct speed limit and not create a fuming tailback behind. Granted, the death-rate has begun to climb back to its former levels but nobody doubts that Brennan was correct to force this change through a reluctant police force. and that When the country is covered in speed cameras, it'll be a safer place and one where the scandal of exorbitant car insurance is a thing of the past.

Brennan's other major initiative is the new terminal at Dublin Airport. If at the next election he can point to millions of extra visitors and Irish people can fly direct to Rome and Malaga for a pittance he can confidently ask for the electorate's verdict on his term in office.

Likewise Micheál Martin need not fear a fair assessment. The health service will improve. The huge investment of recent times brings us up to European levels of annual spending and, given time, we'll see the benefits. True, there are still vested interests to be taken on and Irish hospitals need to start treating patients as clients, not as a nuisance.

But if Martin shows the same decisiveness here as he did when abolishing the health boards, this country will be a better place for his period in the Department of Health.

Banning smoking in the workplace is a genuine world-leading innovation and despite publicans' concerns, may do for the pub industry what decent cinema facilities did for going to the pictures.

At the next election, Fianna Fáil will point to these changes and more.

The gardaí will have been made accountable, at last. The IRA ceasefire will be another four years old. The SSIAs will have come on stream and it now looks as if those who opted for the stock market option won't get badly done, after all.

That's not to say Fianna Fáil should lose the run of themselves. Charlie McCreevy should move faster to reassure the PAYE sector that there'll be no messing about with the benchmarking pay rises. The boom passed some people by. For them, the benchmarking payments are the crumbs from the feast. Take away those crumbs and ordinary decent punters will rear up like a troop of enraged hippopotamuses.

Perhaps Bertie Ahern is, indeed, at the end of the line. But more likely he's just in need of a decent summer holiday and, when he comes back, he'll continue to put pressure on the ministers to deliver real changes. He'll be conscious that all governments endure mid-term dips in support and you simply have to work your way out the other side. If his ministers continue their present rate of delivery this administration can easily see off Messrs Kenny and Rabbitte in four years' time.