Labour:The decision to run a joint campaign with Fine Gael in the election was not challenged at yesterday's Labour Party parliamentary meeting despite private reservations.
However, the strategy agreed at the Tralee conference in 2005 has been criticised by a trustee and former national treasurer of the party, David Leach, in an article written for today's Irish Times.
In his article Leach says that those who opposed the Mullingar accord at the party's Tralee conference argued that the strategy would benefit Fine Gael and not Labour.
"We did not get the extra seats that Pat Rabbitte believed we would get as part of the alternative. That our 'block' received 77 seats is no consolation to defeated Labour candidates," writes Mr Leach.
Mr Leach's intervention may help to prompt other Mullingar accord opponents to go public, but there is little evidence so far that it will happen today at the party's national executive committee.
Meanwhile, party leader Pat Rabbitte continues not to be involved directly in supporting Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny's attempts to form an alternative government.
While Mr Kenny or his close aides have talked to all of the Independents and the Greens, Mr Rabbitte said he had talked to none of the coalition partners needed by Fine Gael and Labour.
"The prime movers in government formation are others. We are committed to supporting Enda Kenny's candidacy on the 14th," he said after the parliamentary meeting.
The newly-elected chairman of the parliamentary party, Kildare South TD Jack Wall, said "maybe one or two said that they had concerns" about the electoral strategy the party followed.
But he added: "Everyone was supportive of the party leader and the campaign that we ran. It was one of the best we have ever run. This was the most progressive, hard-working campaign."
Fine Gael, he said, was "the driving force" behind forming an alternative to a Fianna Fáil administration. "It is they who will have to contact all the Independents, Greens."
Privately, some senior Labour TDs believe that there is no way the party will be in government: because Fianna Fáil will not come seeking their support and Fine Gael will not have the numbers.
Questioned about electoral strategy, Mr Rabbitte said: "The conclusion was that the heart of the debate is no longer about electoral strategy, but, rather, it is about the changing face of Ireland."
Voters were "sensitive to the campaign of denigration that was run by the two Government parties that an alternative government might put the economy at risk".
He said with hindsight it was possible that Labour should have fought the campaign on economic issues rather than on public services alone.
"If there was criticism at the PLP [parliamentary Labour Party meeting] it was that maybe we should have played a more lead role in the economic area because our record is good,"he told journalists in Leinster House after the meeting.
