The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, last night acknowledged the "pain and frustration" of party members who had witnessed an "abject failure" on the part of their parliamentary party to "lay a glove on the Government over the last five years".
"I hear you. And I promise you change," the new party leader said in Galway last night when he addressed over 500 people at a meeting in the Menlo Park Hotel.
"For five years the people of this country watched breathless as Burke and Foley and Lawlor were paraded before them, living examples of all that was wrong at the heart of the Government then . . . the same Government that we have now," he said.
"You heard it yourselves at the mart, in the office, in the lecture halls, in the pubs, on the streets: 'Sure, ye never laid a glove on them' ", Mr Kenny continued.
"And, like it or not, we didn't. As scandal after scandal rolled across the political landscape, we made the fatal mistake of behaving not as an effective opposition, but as a government-in-waiting."
Under his leadership, things would be different, and Fine Gael would resolutely oppose and expose at every opportunity the "crassness and contempt that lies at the heart of the Fianna Fáil-PD coalition".
In the times ahead, the "Teflon Taoiseach" would no longer have things his own way, he said, as he warned of a rumbling economy, rising inflation, dire warnings on benchmarking and more job losses on the horizon.
Mr Kenny was given a standing ovation when he addressed the meeting in Galway, which was chaired by Prof Tom O'Malley, law lecturer at NUI Galway.
Among those TDs in attendance were the parliamentary party chairman, Mr Padraic McCormack of Galway West, Mr Paul Connaughton of Galway East, Mr Denis Naughten, and two former TDs, Ms Deirdre Clune and Ms Frances Fitzgerald.
Fine Gael saw its overall vote in Galway drop by 15.34 per cent in the last election, down from over 53 per cent in the 1997 election to 38 per cent this time.
"There will be no more talking down to the members of Fine Gael," Mr Kenny said, to applause.
"This is your party," he said, and this engagement and consultation with members at a series of eight regional meetings would serve to offer voters a "realistic opposition" in the next election.
Fine Gael was up against "one of the slickest operations in Europe", but he looked forward to the challenge.
