The south Dublin Fianna Fáil faithful, armed with cable ties and ladders, dutifully set out to hang posters for their presidential candidate Jim Gavin on September 24th. Hanging election posters is dull and menial work, the kind only done from pure loyalty. But the dedicated local volunteers managed to dominate the prime real estate of lamp-posts all along the busy Mespil Road beside the canal, with the former Dublin football manager’s face dominating the street.
Exactly one week on from Gavin’s departure and the collapse of Fianna Fáil’s first presidential campaign in almost 30 years, the posters still hang there. Either the demoralised volunteers couldn’t muster the energy to take them down, or someone thought they should remain as a pointed monument to failure for all the ministerial cars passing beneath them on their way to the annual Cairde Fáil dinner on Burlington Road on Saturday night.
Micheál Martin was forced to open his guest of honour speech to the almost 1,200 attendees in the hotel ballroom with an apology, telling the party’s grassroots that he was “deeply sorry” for how things had turned out. One of the only times the crowd burst into applause during the Taoiseach’s speech, apart from in support of people suffering the genocide in Gaza, was when Mr Martin mentioned he was thinking of the Gavin family and the traumatic time they have had.
The horrible experience that the Gavin family have surely endured this week is anathema to many card carrying Fianna Fáilers, who strongly feel that the party disgraced itself in how it treated Gavin. The misguided attempts in the hours after he left the race to portray the collapse of the campaign as Gavin’s fault for not owning up to the rent issue has made a bad situation worse in some supporters’ minds.
RM Block
Like the posters hanging over the streets outside, the party’s non-candidate continued to hang over the event. As the band in the Burlington hotel played ABBA covers while Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, front pages were being freshly printed which showed Fianna Fáil’s non-runner was still on 12 per cent in the latest poll. This is a unique kind of torment for the party , which will now be forced to witness the statistical certainty of the tens of thousands of votes that it had to do precisely nothing to earn.
The Taoiseach finds himself in the liminal space of having neither a candidate nor a campaign for the presidential election, despite being the most senior politician in the country. Martin has already said he will be voting for Heather Humphreys, but told journalists at the Cairde Fáil dinner that he would not be campaigning for the Fine Gael candidate. However, he was not able to avoid effectively campaigning against Catherine Connolly’s candidacy, with his utterances about how the Independent left-wing candidate is “anti-EU.” The Taoiseach seems to be phlegmatically for one candidate, but passionately against the other.
Saturday night was the last Cairde Fáil dinner before the 100-year anniversary of the founding of Fianna Fáil, which the party will celebrate on May 16th, 2026. By the time it reaches its centenary, its political lifetime will be book ended by its two longest serving leaders: its founder Éamon de Valera’s record 33 year term, and Micheál Martin’s 15 years. Martin will have served as a TD for well over a third of the party’s entire existence.
In a humble press conference with journalists, where Martin did his best to answer questions about the Gavin affair, there was one illuminating moment when the Taoiseach was asked about Jim O’Callaghan’s stated aspiration to lead the party one day. “That’s quite a reasonable thing to say,” a softer Martin replied. “And there’s nothing wrong with ambition at all.”
