through the election campaign, it was clear the contest for the leadership of the new government was effectively over. Fine Gael was now at twice Labour’s standing in the polls, and heading for an overall majority. Our own private polling was telling us that the picture was possibly even worse than the published polls suggested. Transposed onto constituencies, it looked like Fine Gael would take most of the marginal seats, and would have a seat bonus over and above their vote share.
In previous general elections Labour’s support had also ebbed away during the campaign. In our pre-election planning, we considered that this might happen again. As every election has its own momentum, the direction might need to change mid-way, and that we should, therefore, be prepared to change tack, if necessary, during the campaign. We thought of how in 1997 Fianna Fáil had come from behind in the last week with tax promises, and how in 2007, voters, who at the beginning of the campaign wanted to boot Bertie from office had, however reluctantly, decided to stay with the devil they knew and put Fianna Fáil back into power. We therefore decided to hold back €150,000 of our election budget for a late campaign push or advertising campaign in the final week. The time had now come to use it.
With ten days to go, the question was no longer who would lead the next government, but whether it would be a single party Fine Gael government or a coalition. We needed to re-define the choice facing voters on polling day and to give those who were reluctant a compelling reason to switch to Labour. Fine Gael had hammered us in the media on taxation policy. Labour’s argument for a 50/50 split between tax and expenditure cuts in future budgets supplied the evidence that Labour, if not exactly the ‘high tax party’ that Fine Gael was painting us as, certainly leaned more in the tax direction. Fine Gael, on the other hand, were arguing for a 3:1 ratio between expenditure cuts and tax. (Leo Varadkar at one stage suggested it should be 4:1.) Therefore, there was no public debate about what a single party Fine Gael government might do, and no examination of their preference for expenditure cuts. We decided, therefore, to target Fine Gael’s preference for cuts and to change our main campaign pitch summary to ‘For a Fair and Balanced Government’.
A game-changing communications intervention at this stage of the campaign would need to be catchy and controversial. Mark Garrett and the team went to work on ideas. I was in the car, being briefed by Karen Griffin between stops, when Mark got back to me with a progress report. The team had an idea for a series of newspaper ads based on the Tesco catchphrase ‘Every Little Helps’. It was proposed we would run a campaign based on the phrase ‘Every Little Cut Hurts’.
Over the course of the day, the idea was developed further and applied to different formats. I eventually saw the final design proposals on my tablet computer that evening. The concept was good, and I felt the ads would get attention and could help change the outcome of the election. (They were certainly controversial, as evidenced by Tesco objecting strongly to them.) Unfortunately, I paid little attention to the detailed cuts which the ads mentioned and this was a mistake for which I would pay a very high price later. That mistake was then compounded further when those specific cuts were not weeded out in our negotiations on the Programme for Government.
I returned home to my constituency of Dun Laoghaire the day before polling, having travelled the country and given the campaign every ounce of effort and energy. ‘I can do no more,’ I told myself, and tried to relax. But without success. I found my anxiety suddenly coming to focus on my own seat in Dun Laoghaire. I felt I had spent too little time campaigning for myself locally and had effectively given my running mate, Ivana Bacik, a clear run. In the constituency I hoped that the national and media profile of a leader would compensate for my own absence from the doorsteps. As the broadcast moratorium came down on the evening of Thursday, 24 February, like the 565 other candidates, all I could do was resign my fate to that remarkable democratic phenomenon: the next morning at 7 a.m. the quiet procession of citizens to their polling stations would begin, and, in the privacy of the ballot box, they would make free choices about who would represent them in the next national parliament. Surely there is no greater honour in a democracy than to be selected for that role by our fellow citizens.
As always, I voted at around 10 a.m. in Scoil Mhuire, Rathsallagh. I was met by a bank of cameras and journalists looking for that shot and description of me dropping my voting paper into the ballot box. I returned home and spent the day with my team, planning as best we could for whatever the next days of ‘the count’ would bring.
CHAPTER 4
FORMING A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
The day of the count is nervous and tense for election candidates. We wait, like a student waiting for exam results, or a litigant counting down the hours while the jury deliberates. The adrenaline has abated after the intensity of a three- or four-week campaign. Now, the truth tumbles unstoppably from the count centre ballot boxes. There is nothing to do but wait.
Between local and general elections, I have been through ten of these mornings. Candidates have different coping mechanisms. Mine is to busy myself with domestic chores: cleaning out my car, tidying the house, visiting the recycling centre with the detritus of the campaign and shopping for the makings of a post-count get-together with my team later that night or in the early hours of the following morning.
Meanwhile, at the count in the Loughlinstown Leisure Centre, party activists are leaning over the barriers to record the destination of each vote as it is opened by the counter. This tally of votes will continue until a fairly accurate estimate is made of the total first preference votes for each candidate. Long before that insight, candidates are desperate to know how they are doing and it can be difficult to tell since the particular order in which ballot boxes are opened may well differ between strong and weak areas for a candidate. That is why it is essential to have experienced tally-masters at the count centre who can quickly analyse the piles and predict the results, from early indications.
Over the years, this role was fulfilled in our team by my wife, Carol Hanney, who had managed my election campaigns in the early part of my career. By 9.45 am or 10 am at the latest, she could predict whether I was safe or struggling, and make quite an accurate prediction of the election outcome in the constituency.
The count of Saturday 26 February 2011 started like none I had ever previously experienced. Our tally master on the day, Frank O’Connor, rang me at around 10 a.m. with the good news that I was likely to top the poll (which would have been a first for me in a general election). It was unclear whether or not Ivana Bacik would take a second seat.
Earlier that morning, RTÉ had broadcast the results of an exit poll which put Fine Gael on 36.1 per cent, Labour on 20.5 per cent, Fianna Fáil on 15.1 per cent, Sinn Féin on 10.1 per cent, Independents on 15.5 per cent and Greens on 2.5 per cent. As expected, the political map was being redrawn. If confirmed in the real count, I would be leading Labour to its best ever general election result, with twice the share of the vote we had received at each of the three previous general elections. Labour, for the first time ever, would be the second largest party in the State.
Barry Desmond rang me early that morning to congratulate me on both my own re-election and on the Party’s performance. Barry had been the Labour TD for Dun Laoghaire from 1969 until his election to the European Parliament in 1989. Although we had been constituency rivals for a time, Barry and his wife Stella became fond friends and strong supporters of mine in the constituency. I was always glad of his experience and wise counsel, and that morning I especially welcomed his warm call.
But the overall result was still uncertain. If the Fine Gael tally was understated, they could yet form a single-party government or pick up enough support from Fine Gael-leaning Independents to form a minority government. We would not know that for definite until the final votes had been counted, well into Sunday. In the end, Fine Gael got seventy-six seats, just seven short of an overall majority of 83. Fianna Fáil with twenty seats were down to a quarter of their normal size. The Greens were wiped out. Sinn Féin had made a significant breakthrough with fourteen seats and there were
