Mary Regan

And there doesn't seem to be anyone in Fianna Fáil with the same sort of hunger

So Jack Chambers might have fallen as the next in line.

Then all attention turned to Jim O'Callaghan last autumn.

And I think TDs were getting a little bit tired of Jim O'Callaghan's waiting around and not seizing the opportunity as he had it, just waiting for it to fall on his lap, as it were.

And then Jim O'Callaghan had a blunder of his own with the threat to call in the army.

Has that damaged Jim O'Callaghan, do you think, as a leadership candidate?

And the next stumbling block for him is that he is Director of Elections in the GOE West by election.

And given the events of the last two weeks and Fianna Fáil might do even worse than it might have anticipated in the first place.

But Jim O'Connor had always sort of surprised me that he was quite popular amongst rural Ireland, given the constituency of South Dublin that he represents and, you know, the sort of core Fianna Fáil values many of the rural TDs felt he represented.

But it looks like now we're looking to Dara Cleary and Dara O'Brien, one the Dublin TD and one the rural Ireland minister.

And the perception was that Fianna Fáil had a problem in Dublin and it needed a Dublin leader to solve its problem in Dublin.

Now it could have a problem in rural Ireland.

Just as you mentioned women in Fianna Fáil and the women in ministerial rank who aren't being spoken about as leaders, there are some very effective and strong women in the Fianna Fáil ranks who were not promoted by Micheál Martin, like Catherine Arda.

There are people like Erin McGrehan who have been quite good but didn't get the position.

So Fianna Fáil does have, you know, a sort of...

with women rising up the ranks of the party.

Just speaking on that topic, Independent Ireland seemed to have been the big winners out of the recent events.

They were there at the protests, but they weren't fair-weather people who had just joined in, like some opposition parties that had been accused of.

They were sort of with this constituency that were protesting from the very start, and they didn't flake on that, OK?

So they were the ones outside the Dáil on the no confidence day cheering.