On Monday night, Frances Fitzgerald was on two phones at the one time, fighting for her political life. Hours previously, the Department of Justice had released a fresh batch of documents that would end her spell as Tánaiste and bring the curtain down on a Cabinet career of more than six years.
Fitzgerald was already in trouble over one email which showed she had been informed of a legal strategy pursued by An Garda Síochána against whistleblower Maurice McCabe at a commission of investigation.
The documents released just after 6.30pm on Monday proved she had been told about this strategy on a number of further occasions. Fianna Fáil was already insistent she should resign, but now her own colleagues began to turn against her.
The new emails unleashed a frenzy. This was the turning point: up to now, the public and media would have blamed both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for an election; now it looked like the blame would fall on Fine Gael alone.
Fine Gael TDs and Ministers knew it, and began standing back from the woman they had so staunchly defended over the preceding days.
Noel Rock, Fine Gael TD for Dublin North West, had been due to appear on the Tonight Show on TV3 at 11pm on Monday to hold the party line.
Amid the confusion and mounting anger at Fitzgerald, at 9.30pm Rock pulled out of his media appearance. He informed Fine Gael officials, and was told by the Taoiseach's staff, that Leo Varadkar had made it clear that TDs were to defend Fitzgerald.
Word then reached the then-Tánaiste herself that Rock, a first-time deputy, was pulling from the TV3 outing. All the while, other members of the parliamentary party were declining to publicly defend Fitzgerald.
At 9.50pm, she rang Rock and asked him to reconsider. While saying she didn’t want to pressure him, Fitzgerald pressed the arguments of why she had done nothing wrong and should not have to stand down.
While she was on the phone to Rock, she took another call, this one from Simon Coveney, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who would be appointed as the new Tánaiste on Thursday. The same arguments were made by Fitzgerald to Coveney.
Didn’t feel comfortable
Rock concluded his call by saying he didn’t feel comfortable with the position he was being asked to defend. He didn’t show up to his TV3 appointment with Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates.
But just after 10.30pm, Coveney went against the wind and defended Fitzgerald on RTÉ's Claire Byrne Live, just as the ground crumbled beneath Fine Gael's feet.
The new documents released by the Department of Justice emerged on foot of a trawl ordered by Varadkar, and their public disclosure brought Fitzgerald’s ministerial career to an end.
At that point, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs were already looking for a way out of the controversy. They had been chastened by an almost universally hostile reaction last weekend, from their constituents and from local party organisations, to the prospect of a snap general election.
Frances Fitzgerald was wily enough to survive for so long in politics, she was wily enough to see the writing on the wall
As Fine Gael TDs who had defended Fitzgerald until that point began to turn against her, Varadkar spoke to his then-tánaiste that Monday evening in Government Buildings. Sources close to both insist he did not ask her to resign.
“He never, ever put any pressure on her, right to the end,” says one source close to Fitzgerald. “She was wily enough to survive for so long in politics, she was wily enough to see the writing on the wall.”
“You got the feeling it was over that night,” says the figure, who claims there was, until then, a view in Fine Gael that Fianna Fáil would eventually back down from tabling its motion of no-confidence in Fitzgerald and would strike a deal that would allow her to stay in place.
Without the emergence of the new documents, even members of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party would have accepted a deal.
But there were tensions at play within Fianna Fáil too, especially over an incident in the Dáil bar on the previous Thursday, when TDs Thomas Byrne and Barry Cowen cheered on justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan as he told RTÉ’s Six One news his party no longer had any confidence in Fitzgerald.
Michael Moynihan, the understated but influential Fianna Fáil chief whip, immediately rose from where he was eating his sandwich elsewhere in the members’ bar and, sensing danger, reprimanded Byrne and Cowen.
Much exaggerated
It was too late, however, and Fine Gael used a much exaggerated version of what had happened to damage their rivals. It led to differing views in Fianna Fáil, with Dublin Fingal TD Darragh O’Brien criticising Byrne in an internal WhatsApp group last Saturday night.
O’Brien had claimed that, if there was to be a general election, “we will be blamed and we will lose support”, and Byrne responded that such comments were better made offline.
O’Brien objected, claiming his approach “is much more constrained and balanced and responsible than comments and reactions whilst watching the news during the week in the Dáil”.
Yet the dispute, although low-level and arguably a result of pre-existing tensions, spoke to unease in Fianna Fáil about what exactly was going on behind closed doors between the Taoiseach and Micheál Martin in a series of meetings seeking to avert a general election.
It is claimed that Fianna Fáil never moved from its position that Fitzgerald had to go, and that Fine Gael never moved from its view she had done nothing wrong
Only four people were in on the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael talks: the two leaders; Brian Murphy, Varadkar’s chief of staff; and Deirdre Gillane, Martin’s chef de cabinet. On the Fine Gael side, Eoghan Murphy, the Minister for Housing and the Taoiseach’s closest ally, was also involved in the background as events progressed.
Fianna Fáil sources say they were given the second batch of emails, the ones that would eventually finish Fitzgerald, on Saturday and immediately realised their import.
They claim they did not speak about the newly released emails in order to maintain the trust of the talks. It was also felt that Fine Gael wanted these emails to leak, which would provide time and space to attempt to explain their contents.
It is also claimed that Fianna Fáil never moved from its position that Fitzgerald had to go, and that Fine Gael never moved from its view she had done nothing wrong.
Over the course of four meetings on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, they talked instead about areas they could agree on (Martin and Varadkar drew up a list of reforms in the justice area) rather than focus on what they couldn’t.
As he sized Varadkar up, Martin concluded that the Taoiseach had a different thought process from other interlocutors he had encountered.
The first point on a draft of the agreement seen by The Irish Times refers to Fitzgerald appearing before the Disclosures Tribunal in early January "to account for her handling of these matters".
Confident
Fianna Fáil insists that this was tabled by Fine Gael and that Martin never yielded in his view that Fitzgerald should stand down. He seemed confident of an outcome that would benefit Fianna Fáil, and was reported to be in “great form” around Leinster House on Monday. The Cork South Central TD confidently predicted there would be no election for months, according one source who spoke to him at that time.
The election drumbeats slowed throughout Monday, even as Fine Gael staff worked to prepare their manifesto, but it was not clear why those in Fine Gael, in particular, believed the threat of an election was receding.
Over last weekend, another leg of the governmental stool became nervous, and the Independent Alliance formed the view that Fitzgerald had to go to avoid an election. Finian McGrath and Shane Ross sought a meeting with Varadkar before the Tuesday Cabinet meeting at which Fitzgerald tendered her resignation.
She and Varadkar met on Tuesday morning before the meeting, and Varadkar informed his Independent colleagues that the issue would be dealt with at Cabinet itself.
Martin and Varadkar were also due to meet on Tuesday, but Fitzgerald’s resignation removed the main sticking point, and avoided a general election that all parties had been scrambling to prepare for.
Last Saturday, Fine Gael’s executive council met and arranged for selection conventions to be held this week. After the meeting, the party held a press conference on the steps of its headquarters on Upper Mount Street, Dublin, outlining its preparations.
Accelerating preparations
A block away, on Lower Mount Street, Fianna Fáil too was accelerating its preparations, albeit in quieter fashion at its headquarters.
Its national constituencies committee met for several hours to prepare for a snap election. At that stage, 18 Fianna Fáil conventions had been completed. More are scheduled to take place by Christmas.
The recent strains have given rise to a view that even though a snap election was avoided, one will be held in the coming months
“We were just putting things in place just in case we had to go into election mode,” said a source. “We were making sure that the local organisations had been contacted and told to be ready.
“The constituencies committee had already resolved to be ready by March anyway, and that plan will still hold, although it is expected that the majority of conventions will be completed by the end of January. We have a lot of that preparation done, so we are just ready to press the button.”
The recent strains have given rise to a view that even though a snap election was avoided, one will be held in the coming months. Against that, Fianna Fáil figures are adamant they want to see the confidence-and-supply deal through to its concluding third budget next autumn.
Senior figures in Fine Gael also believe Varadkar and Martin’s relationship has developed in the white heat of a political crisis, and that the Taoiseach must have more achievements to his name before going to the country.
No matter when the election is held, the past week has jolted everyone in Irish politics to be ready for the ballot when it comes.
