Time for Fine Gael to put flesh on the skeleton

This weekend's Fine Gael ard-fheis at the Citywest in Dublin is a crucial one for the main Opposition party as it presents its outline approach to the next election, now only a year away, against a backdrop of mixed and fluctuating opinion poll ratings.

The latest poll, Red C in the Sunday Business Post, sees Fianna Fáil recover five points, while Fine Gael drop two. These figures are not significant in themselves, but they confirm a seesaw pattern over the past 18 months, in which neither the current Government parties nor the proposed Rainbow alternative – with or without the Greens – have enough to form a government.

The issues on which the Government is weak are clear, especially health and an uncertain fear that the good times are being frittered away; but Fine Gael has failed to capitalise consistently on these weaknesses and time is beginning to run out.

Of course, Fine Gael has had two main priorities up to this. Firstly, the party had to be rebuilt after the catastrophe of the 2002 election. This has, indeed, been done, and great credit is due to Enda Kenny and Phil Hogan for that. The 2004 local elections showed that Fine Gael does have a powerful election machine that can deliver when the circumstances are right.

The second priority was to make a Fine Gael-led government a creditable alternative. Established wisdom holds that this necessitated a pre-election pact with Labour, and, whatever negative impact such a pact will have on Labour itself, Fine Gael has persuaded Pat Rabbitte to come on board unequivocally.

But that's as far as the good news goes. While Fine Gael (and their junior Labour partners) are loud in criticising the Government – and this criticism does resonate with large sections of the electorate – there is much less precision about the alternative policies that will solve the issues that concern the floating voter public.

This week saw Sinn Féin launch its health strategy, for example, with a strong call for extra funding and a reversal of the Hanly strategy in respect of local hospitals. But we still don't know what Fine Gael actually proposes to do about the crisis.

It is now becoming apparent that Fine Gael has three main planks they intend to push in the election campaign: management or mismanagement of the public finances, leading to waste of resources; health; and crime. Value for money is the central plank, and the one that binds all others together.

This, however, is a traditional Fine Gael theme, the idea that a bunch of nouveaux riches like Fianna Fáil can't be trusted with the people's money. How much impact it will have on voters who have deserted Fine Gael is a moot point, because Fianna Fáil's strongest card remains the health of the economy and the "you've-never-had-it-so-good" message. It is hard to argue with those who say that Fine Gael will only be successful with its value-for-money strategy when it can concretely show how it would use the cash, and how it will avoid waste, so producing better services.

It's worth contrasting this emphasis on value for money with Labour's insistence on a fairer societal division of the country's wealth. Which will be the dominant Rainbow theme?

The PDs have put it starkly up to Fine Gael with their call for more tax cuts. Neither economically nor socially can this call be justified, but it appeals to the core middle-class vote that Fine Gael must hold and recover if it is to have any prospect of government.

Enda Kenny and Richard Bruton will need to confront this head on and, given that their strategy is predicated on a pact with Labour, they will need to attack it and explain why it is wrong. It will not be enough to denounce it as an empty promise. The voter with privilege to defend will need to know why it should not happen.

So, in Kenny's key address, he will need to show that Fine Gael does have alternative policies as well as criticism of what the Government is doing, and these policies can realistically gel with what Labour is saying.

This doesn't mean adopting Labour's emphasis – that might well cost Fine Gael votes – but it does mean expressing Fine Gael's separate identity in a positive rather than a negative way, showing what the party is for rather than what it is against.

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity