A devastating defeat may allow FF to rid itself of shadows of the past

I ONCE had a boss who didn’t believe in departing staff working out their notice.

As soon as he could, once he’d been given a resignation letter or other indication that an employee planned to be gone a month or three months down the line, he handed them their salary for that month or those three months, together with their holiday entitlements plus anything else they were due and gave them instructions about the hand-over of files and computers.

“You won’t need to come back tomorrow or ever,” he would tell them. “And if you’ve sorted everything by lunchtime, you’re welcome to go then.”

When a board member, concerned about the quite high cost to the company, queried this approach, the managing director would smile.

“Keeps coffee out of the machinery,” was his explanation.

The explanation was not based on an assumption that guys working out their notice would deliberately pour coffee into the studio controls. It was largely figurative, but recognised that once someone’s workplace loyalties have shifted, their relationship with their soon-to-be-former employer changes radically. They have less of an investment in the company’s future, so their anxiety to prevent coffee dribbling into the works may be diminished, as may be their willingness to volunteer for all-nighters to get out an urgent proposal or client report.

Add the sudden extra caution on the part of staff created by the fear of sharing some piece of information which might be useful to the departing member in a new and possibly competitive role, and you get a skewed dynamic which can be irritating for a week, problematic for a month and crippling for three months.

Hence my former boss’s “get them out by 4.30” approach, which had the incidental benefit of giving the former employee a neat — and paid — buffer period between the last job and the next job.

Now, if that were to be applied to Noel Dempsey and Dermot Ahern, both would be on the back benches when the Dáil resumes after Christmas and two new ministers would be sitting at the Cabinet table in their place. That’s what would have happened in Charlie Haughey’s time as leader.

The new occupants of the ministerial offices in Justice and Transport might be ministers without tenure, but they’d be ministers, nonetheless, with all the perks and prestige the role carries, together with the boost in constituency mood and domination of the news media for a few days as the new guys gave interviews.

Brian Cowen doesn’t do that kind of stuff, so the two of them will stay in office until the General Election.

Coffee in the machines? Not a chance.

These two guys have little or nothing in common, but are twins when it comes to diligence and duty. They’re the kind of teacher’s pet blokes who arrive before everybody else, leave after everybody else, read all the documents they’re supposed to read when they’re supposed to read them, dress every day as if they were going to have their photograph taken and sit up straight at their desks even if the pain kills them. Not that either would be a reliable teacher’s pet. They lack the key qualification: eagerness to be liked. And anyway, if you don’t like them, they figure you’re a covert Blueshirt or Stickie.

In theory, from now on Dempsey and Ahern are lame duck ministers (Beverly Flynn is irrelevant in this context. Interesting and intriguing but, never having received preferment, irrelevant).

The permanent government of the civil service could postpone and delay anything either man wants to achieve until a new administration takes over. Cabinet could disregard their views as coming from men who can have no part in their implementation. Media could ignore them and go to their obvious successors.

None of this is going to happen. Partly because of their workaholism, partly because of their lucidity, partly because of their experience and expertise, they’re going to be fully functional until the day they go out of office. Media will stick with them, not just because they’re coherent, but because there’s so little in the way of succession.

Where’s the thrusting new generation within Fianna Fáil? It’s a crucial difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that the oppositional voices within Fine Gael come from smart, attractive, highly educated, media-savvy members of that party, whereas the oppositional voices within Fianna Fáil have been “the usual suspects” for so long that they’re like old tattoos: they never change, just fade a bit but are tediously ever-present. Where are Fianna Fáil’s smart, attractive, highly educated, media-savvy younger generation, ready to sprout?

In fact, the difference between the problems to be faced by Enda Kenny and by Micheál Martin or Brian Lenihan, (depending on who takes on the Fianna Fáil leadership) could arguably be summed up by a comment made long ago by Gay Byrne in a quite different context. Asked why he so frequently gave space to a particularly irritating panellist on the Late Late Show, Gaybo looked surprised, as if the answer was obvious.

“All I have to do is smack him down,” he explained. “I don’t have to wind him up.”

The Fine Gael leader has a barrel of potential filled with a bunch of people he may have to slap down now and again. Not easy. But a hell of a lot easier than trying to wind up individuals so demoralised as to be grateful when not publicly spat upon, which is what the person who succeeds Brian Cowen will have to do. It’s a task without precedent in Fianna Fáil and will be the making of whoever takes it on, since even if they’re not inspired in how they do it, they have on their side the old saw that you can’t fall off the floor.

In addition, the new man or woman at the top in Fianna Fáil will have two other advantages. The first is the changing of the guard. Since the last general election, Seamus Brennan, Martin Cullen, Dermot Ahern, Bertie Ahern, Noel Dempsey, Jim McDaid and Brian Cowen will be gone from the Fianna Fáil front bench. Those guys (together with others like John O’Donohue and as-yet unknown seat- losers in the forthcoming election) had been around for such a long time, and been in office for such a chunk of that time that they cast long shadows and it’s difficult to grow the next generation in such shadows.

The second advantage the new Fianna Fáil leader will have is paradoxical. It lies in the fact that the party will be in opposition. No big jobs to promise. Neither mercs nor perks nor prominence on offer.

A good thing? Very much so.

Taoisigh tend not to find the time to prioritise people-development, whereas leaders in opposition do precisely that. A devastating defeat at the polls does more than remove those who personify the entrenched past and allow for much-needed organisational change. It can also create a humility leading to a willingness to learn.