John Minihan, the Cork senator, suggested that Mary Harney, one of the founders of the PDs, should be asked by Bertie Ahern to join Fianna Fail if it meant her keeping the health portfolio.
Sunday Independent : http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 85361.html
The end of the PD's.....a thorn in the side of FINE GAEL since 1987.
That makes sense. Bertie has brought the Blaney organisation back in. Bringing the PDs home too would be a remarkable double.
Makes Sense........
Health needs her and nobody else has the will to succeed........
also as I expect this to be her last dail....she could concentrate on the portfolio.............a kinda jim dooge (as ive said before).....
we cannot afford to loose her....
If FF and the PDs merged, where would the PD vote go? I hope it doesn't happen.
What Vote!Originally Posted by FutureTaoiseach
Considering most of it went back to FG......
Harney struggled home, and Grealish would have been beaten if it was not for a silly strategy out in Galway by FG
“If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you’re going to have a musical comedy administration.” -Robert Moses
How do you mean? FG were nowhere in the running for a second seat in Galway West. FF's Crowe was 6th.
Ich mag Steine!
Someone should tell the Blaney people they are in FF.
They didn't campaign that way, and at the count they had a separate team.
If there is a future, it will be Green.
Whether you like them or not the PDS have totally changed the landscape of Irish politics (something which parties like FG and Labour have failed to do over a much longer time). Today's economy is due in a huge part to the PDs, the accountability and the tribunals into the misdeeds of the past would never have happened if O'Malley had stayed within FF.
The only thing which Michael McDowell gave to the party is the "radical or redundant" compass, but paradoxically he was the person who has made the party redundant, through a complete lack of focus on the issue that will dominate the next 50 years; the rights of the individual vs. the role of the state. I don't believe that there is any hunger within the remnants of the PDs to take up this challenge, so by inference they are indeed redundant.
We could waste time and bandwidth discussing where things went wrong (personally I would go back to the day that Harney rather than Cox became leader) but nothing will change the fact there the current narrow agenda that the PDs have set for themselves is better achieved through a role in one of the two big parties. Given that FG has become a permant feature in opposition, if they want to get things done, then it has to be within FF.
My dogma was run over by my karma. Economic Left/Right: 2.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.03
I think Bertie will leave Mary as a PD. It is a good illusion and served FF well in this election, that the issues in the health service are somehow the fault of a seperate party.
It also deals with middle Irelands concern at the concept of an FF single party government.
Its win win for Bertie. Harney will implement the colocation rip off and the money will keep rolling in for FF. Every time they get a dodgy opinion poll, they will make soundings about moving to the left or embracing Labour, but as those in the Labour party like Howlin will eventually discover, its just a sham.
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