Party finally over for Irish Progressive Democrats (News Feature)

By Fiona Smith Nov 11, 2008, 2:03 GMT

Dublin - As Ireland's Progressive Democrats (PDS) ground to a halt at the weekend, it seemed fitting, given the collapse of the low-taxation Celtic Tiger economy, that the party which peddled liberal free-market economic policies was 'no longer politically viable.'

One of the junior parties in the Irish coalition government, the PDs, which have just two seats in the lower house or Dail, voted to wind up the party by 201 votes to 161.

In government, the PDs campaigned successfully for the low-taxation policies which helped create Ireland's economic boom, which began in the mid-1990s and lasted for over a decade.

Tax reform will form the cornerstone of the party's legacy, but the party started out with the aim of 'breaking the moulds' in Irish politics when it was founded in 1985 by Desmond O'Malley, who had been expelled from Ireland's Fianna Fail party for his refusal to toe the party line.

At a time of crippling taxation, when as O'Malley saw it 'national morale was at an all-time low,' other disaffected politicians from the country's two leading parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, joined the queue to form the new party.

These included Michael McDowell and Mary Harney, who went on to become the first Irish woman to lead any of the major parties when she took over from O'Malley as leader in 1993.

With internecine rows over the Northern Irish conflict and issues such as abortion and divorce dominating Irish politics while the economy was failing, the PDs represented a welcome change for a jaded Irish electorate.

The party advocated a peaceful approach to the conflict in Northern Ireland, tax reform and a clear distinction between church and state.

Back in February 1986, when polls showed that the new party had gained the support of 25 per cent of the electorate, it seemed the PDs were achieving their mould-breaking aims.

The party won 14 seats in the general election of February 1987 and became the third largest party in the Dail.

In June 1989, they entered a coalition government with Fianna Fail only to pull out in 1992 after a row with Fianna Fail over evidence to a tribunal investigating corruption in the meat industry.

The party won 10 seats in the ensuing election, but remained out of government for five years.

In 1997, despite a disastrous campaign based on social welfare cuts aimed at single mothers and cutbacks in the public sector, the PDs had the correct numbers to form a coalition with Fianna Fail with party leader Harney as deputy prime minister.

The party remained in government as a coalition partner until 2002 when Harney led the party to renewed success, doubling its number of seats to eight.

It formed another coalition with Fianna Fail, with Harney becoming health minister in 2004. Party leadership passed on to Michael McDowell in 2006 after a behind-closed-doors spat. McDowell became deputy prime minister.

The party's decision to remain in coalition with Fianna Fail until the 2007 general election despite damaging revelations about then prime minister Bertie Ahern's financial affairs may well have been its undoing.

A party which had always campaigned on probity in public life was seen to hesitate, threaten and do nothing when faced with allegations of corruption at the highest governmental level.

In the 2007 election, the parliamentary party shrank from eight to just two, including Harney, who is to remain in office as an independent.

Harney, whose acceptance of the Health Ministry, the poisoned chalice of Irish government, may also have sounded the death knell for her party, was pragmatic in her approach to the demise of the PDs.

'You can't sustain a political party without the ability to elect people to the Dail,' she told the Sunday Tribune newspaper.