Fianna Fáil’s options - Fighting their past to build a real future

FIANNA FÁIL met their long-deserved Waterloo in February but even that denouement may not have prepared some of the party’s neanderthal hardcore for the idea that they would be wasting time and very scarce resources by nominating a candidate to contest October’s presidential election.

It must have been a terribly bitter pill to swallow for an organisation that almost effortlessly monopolised the office but if there was a straw to clutch at, no matter how frail, it was the party’s acceptance of the decision and the pragmatism behind it.

This belated honesty does not, however, guarantee that the party has even a realistic prospect of nominating the successor to our next president in seven years’ time.