About the only sensible thing Michael McDowell ever said during his political career was that the PDs had to be either radical or redundant. The party stopped being radical and thus became redundant the moment Mary Harney decided to share power with Bertie Ahern.
Of course, the PDs had shared power with Fianna Fail before but there was always a degree of instability so long as the PDs stuck by their ethical principles. It’s actually impossible to maintain ethical standards and, at the same time, share power with a corrupt party like Fianna Fail as the Greens have quickly discovered.
Harney, realising this, quickly abandoned the party’s core value of defending high ethical standards in public office and led the party back down to the Fianna Fail sewers from which the original leaders of the PDs, including Harney, had courageously extracted themselves in 1985.
Once back in the sewer, political life became much easier for Harney and most of her colleagues, both parties floated along at the same level, happily sharing the same stench.
The problem of course was that voters couldn’t tell the difference anymore so why bother voting for a party that had voluntarily made itself redundant.
PD’s “values” always took a back seat to placating business interests above the interests of the people they were elected to represent. they tried to put a modern airbrushed face on political corruption, by adopting the globalisation economic model, Michael McDowell’s attempted implementation and support of of phone tapping, data retention, mandatory identity cards, and excessive police powers in his criminal justice act. The PDs tried to replace one kind of corruption with another, cleaner kind of corruption possible, where political donations from lobby groups were legalised or loopholed into legality. mush like in the united states. fianna fail like to do it the old fashioned way, in the pub with a handshake and a wink.
My belief is that very few people will mourn the passing of the PD’s. A party that was unashamedly for the rich and the better off whilst the rest of the population should be content with low wage rates and go live in a shanty town. In later years the PD’s were little more than a “whipping boy” for fianna fail and now they must be wondering if the Greens will take their place.