Analysis: Micheál Martin's ambition to keep leading Fianna Fáil

“Some Chinese leaders go on into their eighties,” intoned Charles Haughey imperiously in 1990, a taoiseach just home from a visit to China and talking himself, eventually, out of a job.

Haughey was joking, probably, although he was so terrifying and grandiose that it was usually impossible to be certain. Either way, it didn’t go down too well in Fianna Fáil, and he was gone within two years.

It’s a moment of Fianna Fáil history which comes to mind whenever the future survival of any politically long-lived Irish leader is discussed, and indeed Gavin Jennings instanced it during his interview with Micheál Martin on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Tuesday morning, the second day of Mr Martin’s parliamentary party’s think-in in the Rochestown Park Hotel.

“Fifteen years leading Fianna Fáil now. You told The Sunday Times at the weekend you plan to lead Fianna Fáil into the next general election. That’ll be 20 years, and more if you plan on staying on after the election. You’ll be into your 70s then,” he said.

“One of your predecessors, when we asked him about how long he planned to stay in the job, mused that some Chinese leaders rule into their 80s. Are you heading for thinking like Haughey now?”

That got a laugh from Mr Martin.

“I remember after, he didn’t do too well, in terms of that commentary,” he replied, before saying he was focused on the issues at hand, specifically around disability and housing.

With all due respect to The Sunday Times, Dr Jennings must not read The Echo, given that Mr Martin had given us an exclusive interview in May, in which he had said he intended to lead his party into the next general election.

The Fianna Fáil think-in Morning Ireland interview, is, of course, an occasion freighted with significance ever since the then taoiseach, Brian Cowen, showed up late and croaky on the programme at the Ardilaun Hotel in Galway in September, 2010.

Mr Cowen — a man almost universally acknowledged as a thoroughly decent human being — didn’t sound on top of his brief, to say the least, and Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney, then an opposition TD, tweeted that the Fianna Fáil leader had sounded “halfway between drunk and hungover and totally disinterested”.

The taoiseach’s defenders ran out to say he had been suffering from “nasal congestion”, to little avail.

Their defence was undermined somewhat by the recollections of political reporters — however congested themselves — who had been in the late bar into the early hours as Mr Cowen regaled them with stories and performed his party piece, The Lakes of Pontchartrain.

It was a bad look at a time when Ireland was going through an economic apocalypse and — although nobody could have known it then — we were only two months from an IMF bailout at the cost of our financial sovereignty.

In hindsight, his choice of song might have been better advised, given its lyrics “I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain” and “At each social gathering, a flowing glass I’ll drain”.

Fifteen years later, leaving the Willow Suite of the Rochestown Park Hotel, Micheál Martin, in mighty form, laughed as he headed down the stairs for home around half ten and The Echo reporter asked if there was any fear he might have congestion in the morning.

There wasn’t a pup’s chance of it. The Rochestown Park isn’t the Ardilaun, and Micheál Martin isn’t Brian Cowen. The Turner’s Cross man wasn’t draining too many flowing glasses at the think-in and few who know him could imagine him lacing into Paul Brady songs on a school night.

Later the next morning, two hours after the Morning Ireland interview, at a doorstep in the garden outside the Rochestown Park, Zara King of Virgin Media had another go at the subject of Mr Martin’s retirement plans.

“You were asked this morning on the radio about whether you were planning to finish up in the next couple of years and you said you have plenty of energy and you’re mad to keep going,” she said.

“And one of the things that you said which I thought was interesting is that you’re quite determined to make a big change or a big move in terms of disability before your career comes to an end. Tell us, what are the goals you are setting yourself before you wrap up this great political career?”

Mr Martin looked for a moment like he couldn’t quite decide between being charmed, irritated, or amused, as giggles erupted all around him. He gave into laughter.

“Look, I’m only just after coming out of a general election,” he began, while Ms King replied: “Ah that was a year ago”.

“It’s less than a year ago, less than a year ago, and we did very well, and I think the people took a decision that they wanted us to be lead party in Government — hear me out a second now — and that meant I would be Taoiseach, and that’s what I am and I’m determined to do my job for the people, which is on those issues.

“Disability is one of those key issues, and in terms of education, healthcare, and access to therapies.”

He then spoke at length about disability and education, vastly more important issues than the career of Micheál Martin.

“Every child, particularly a child with additional needs, has the exact same entitlement to a school place as any other child and that has to be the bottom line for us, as a Government and as a society,” he said.

The press conference never did return to his retirement prospects. Given the subject matter, few would disagree that that was fair enough.

The night before, Monday night, in the bar by the Willow Suite, a Fianna Fáil backbencher asked if The Echo reporter had seen the Taoiseach’s speech to the parliamentary party dinner earlier that evening.

He had, as it happened, by earwigging through the hatch to the bar, before he was copped by a smiling Mary Martin.

The Taoiseach, very much on home turf, had been in flying form, relaxed, warm, cracking jokes, and giving all the appearance of a man with no mind to retire.

“C’mere, that fella is going nowhere,” said the TD, a member of the Billy Kelleher faithful, sounding mildly disgusted.

A week earlier, Ireland South MEP Billy Kelleher had lost out, as had been expected, in his bid for the Fianna Fáil candidacy in next month’s presidential election, to Mr Martin’s choice, former Dublin GAA football manager Jim Gavin, but the margin of that defeat — 41 votes to 29 — had come as a serious worry to the party leadership.

To call it a backbench revolt would probably be going too far, but it was striking how many members of the 71-member parliamentary party publicly declaring for Mr Gavin were those who had jobs — ministries or committee chairs — while around 40% went against the boss’s wishes.

In the wake of the result, the joke around Leinster House was that Billy had enjoyed the best week of his three-decade-plus parliamentary career and the worst thing that could possibly have happened to him would have been that he might have won.

Another TD, who said they had voted for Jim Gavin, said Mr Martin had taken “an almighty gamble” by throwing his weight so completely behind the Dubliner.

“Now, if it pays off, and Jim is elected, Micheál will be a genius and the greatest leader since Dev, and the talk of heaves will melt like snow on a ditch, but if Jim doesn’t make it, or if Jim is hammered, I would say you could be talking open season on the leadership.”

The Billy supporter, standing at the bar as the Taoiseach chatted with journalists, disagreed, saying that even if Fianna Fáil lost the presidential election he didn’t think that would end the Martin reign.

“You know, he’s serious about leading us into the next election, and what galls me is he has every f**king chance of doing it, too,” they said.

We’ll see.