Fionnán Sheahan

So remarkable that they've had 84 anyway over those 100 years.

They have two by-elections coming up in the next 10 days, which they don't look like a hope in hell of even being in contention to win, let alone winning.

A lot of the kind of low points of the party won't be in the official history, I'd say, that we see up on banners on the wall and so on.

As you say, they are a different party to the one that we have seen of previous generations.

But what's the overall legacy?

I think the overall legacy is stable democracy because that can't be taken for granted.

I mean, countries, many of the emerging countries which emerged after the First World War, as Ireland did,

It became dictatorships, went to hell on a handcart, had all sorts of problems.

We have continuous democracy.

I think, secondly, we have a level of prosperity.

We have full employment.

We have a brittle and fragile peace in the North, but we have peace.

We have stable industrial relations thus far.

Another Bertie Hearn legacy, by the way, again, pragmatic relationships with the unions.

By the way, that's an important point to be made about Fianna Fáil generally.

They always cultivated good relations with the unions.

Many would argue they infiltrated the unions in particularly the early years.

So those are considerable achievements.

And then finally, John, where will Micheál Martin sit in the panoply of Fianna Fáil leaders?

Because ultimately, he's had to deal with the hand that he was dealt.