Derek Mooney

And I think that's a difficulty in terms of where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are coming from.

In particular for Fianna Fáil, Fianna Fáil is now in competition with Fine Gael, yet they each need each other to maintain themselves in government.

And I think that's the overall problem.

In terms of, actually, I don't think there is a shortage of possible other candidates within Fianna Fáil.

I think there's at least three, possibly four.

But what you have within Fianna Fáil is there was a rule change in 2011, 2012, which makes it very, very difficult to change leaders.

And it isn't because Micheál Martin or the people around him are incredibly skilled or absolutely great tacticians of our time.

It's that the bar is set so high that you have to go masses.

And therefore, there will be no bloodless coup.

The only coup that can happen within Fianna Fáil is going to be an extremely bloody one.

Because I do not see Micheál Martin at the end of this year or next year deciding, OK, time to go, folks.

I'm out of here.

And I think this is going to be knuckle dragging.

And it's it is going to be difficult.

And for any future leader, and it goes back to Ciara's point, which is there's a kind of thing which he who wears the axe never wears the crown.

And no leader wants to go into this covered and into the next thing covered in blood.

I think they're going to have no choice because the situation, that's the way it has been stacked up.

I think what you could see is, and it goes back to Mick's point there, which is if they were to have a good by-election in Galway, then you might see a couple of councillors thinking, well, if I want to get myself into the Dáil, maybe Independent Ireland is my way there and I need to beat anyone else looking to run for there.

So where you don't have Independent Ireland TDs.

be looking at a couple of the councillors there around the margins of that, or maybe even some activists.