Bertie needs to try reverse psychology

For an election that’s not supposed to take place until next year, it’s certainly generating lots of talk in early 2006. One aspect of this talk that deserves a little more attention is the possibility that some of Bertie’s less subtle hints to more long-standing TDs to shuffle off this political coil may have backfired. There’s nothing like “oul talk” that it’s time to go to convince the subject thereof that it’s worth another few years.

Consider first Sunday’s news that Cavan-Monaghan TD and Ceann Comhairle Dr. Rory O’Hanlon is to exercise his right to be automatically returned in the next election. He made this clear in a RTE interview on Sunday that, going by what is reported in the Irish Times (subs. req’d) included some lines that could be interpreted as a warning to the government not to raise the issue of retirement, or even annoyance that it may already have been raised:

Mr O’Hanlon dismissed suggestions that he might retire before the end of the Dáil term, a move that would have created a useful vacancy for the Government parties.

In an interview with RTÉ’s The Week In Politics, Mr O’Hanlon said he “couldn’t see the Taoiseach or any other member of the Government approaching me on that basis” because they would recognise the constitutional position of his office, which had to be “seen to be totally outside party politics”.

Remember this comes only a few weeks after Bertie informing Junior Minister Sile de Valera of a tradition that ministers who do not intend to run in the election resign their ministerial spot to make way for a younger Mercedes candidate. This only seems to have stiffened her resolved to stay and made both of them look bad in the process.

Going back to O’Hanlon, one thing we didn’t get at first is the government’s calculation that it would be better if he retired. While it would open the spot for a younger candidate, it might also be argued that the automatic return of one seat would offer the chance to chase two of the remaining four. But the returns for the last election show the basis of their fear: it’s FG in the vicinity of a gain, particularly if the Independent candidate can’t sustain his support.

In fact it’s arguable that Bertie is thinking ahead to 2012 and worried about having let Rory O’Hanlon glide another 5 years in a seat while the other parties groom younger candidates. The constituency commission made clear that they were thinking about taking a seat away from Cavan-Monaghan, and could do so in the future if depopulation continued, so it’ll require some extra dynamism to fight over a smaller pie in the future. Which suggests that a better approach might have been to make clear to O’Hanlon how much Bertie was looking forward to having him around into the 2nd decade of the century.