By John Spain

THIS week Fianna Fail is in a state of shock. In spite of everything it has done for us over the last decade, in spite of a continuing economic boom that is the envy of Europe, in spite of almost full employment, in spite of our unprecedented wealth, in spite of the achievement of peace in the North with the declaration that the IRA’s war is over, we are turning against the country’s biggest political party.

The extraordinary decline in support for the government — and for Fianna Fail in particular — was revealed at the weekend in a national opinion poll in The Sunday Business Post paper. The poll showed that Fianna Fail could lose a staggering 20 Dail (Parliament) seats in the next general election, with its share of the vote slumping to 35%.

If it was just one poll it could have been dismissed as a blip. But the problem for Fianna Fail is that this is the second time in a week that a national opinion poll has shown a disastrous slide in support for the party.

Just a week earlier a poll in The Irish Times also showed that Fianna Fail support was collapsing and that it could lose over 20 seats in an election and lose power as a result. In fact the Times poll had been even worse, showing Fianna Fail support that was actually below the 32% level the party had got a year ago in the local elections, which was seen as a major humiliation for the party at the time.

The variation over a week (between 32% and 35%) is not significant since these polls give a snapshot on a particular day and have a margin of error of at least a couple of points. What is important is the trend and the scale of the collapse, showing a level of support for Fianna Fail that is way down from the 41.5% vote it got in the 2002 general election, which had been almost good enough to give the party an overall majority.

As you know, it did not get that majority and so ended up again in coalition with its junior partners in government, the Progress-ive Democrats. But if the level of support shown by the polls in the last week is repeated in next year’s general election, Fianna Fail would need far more than the PDs to get back into government for a historic third term.

For Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern, the disastrous poll showings of the past week must be perplexing as well as deeply worrying. The already declared government in waiting of Fine Gael and Labor now looks like a credible alternative, something that was unthinkable even a few months ago. On these figures, the Fine Gael-Labor partnership is already close to overtaking the Fianna Fail/PD government in the polls.

In fact on the stronger poll figures, support for the alternative Government of Fine Gael and Labor, on a combined 40%, is already ahead of the Fianna Fail and PD government at 38%. But allowing for error, it’s probably neck and neck now and if it gets any worse, the Fine Gael-Labor team will definitely be ahead.

Fine Gael and Labor now have 30 seats fewer than the government, but if this week’s share of the vote in the polls were repeated on election day it would be less than 10 behind, and there is lots of time to make up that gap over the coming year.

Poor Bertie. Given the economic boom, he has to be having private nightmares about what has gone wrong.

“It’s the economy, stupid,” the famous phrase coined to keep Democratic campaigners on message during the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, was always the bottom line in elections here as well. And our economy has been through almost a decade of an unprecedented boom and is still booming. So these polls don’t make sense.

No matter what they might say about the North, or the Irish language, or any other issue, people here — like people everywhere else — have always voted in a general election with their pocket books, putting their economic self-interest first.

Is it possible that this is changing? Is it possible that voters here have already (in electoral terms) banked their improved prosperity and are now taking our success for gratitude?

Is it possible that, in spite of all Ahern has done, the voters are going to dump him because of dissatisfaction with the health service, overpriced housing, traffic jams, overwhelmed state services and all the other failures and bottlenecks that go with the unprecedented growth levels we have seen here in recent years?

It seems incredible that the Irish electorate could be so ungenerous, so ungrateful to Fianna Fail and Ahern for all that has been achieved. No wonder Ahern is reported to be privately furious this week and demanding answers from his ministers and advisors.

One of the very worrying things for Fianna Fail is that they have been stuck at around the 35% level for some time now. They got a few points of a boost after the Easter 1916 commemorations but that evaporated quickly, and they are back down to 35% or even lower again. The Fianna Fail backbenchers in marginal areas are getting more nervous all the time about their chances of being re-elected.

So what’s gone wrong for the Teflon Taoiseach Ahern, the man that no mud would stick to, the cuddly, bumbling leader that everyone loves?

Is it the appalling A&E conditions in our hospitals? The daily traffic chaos? The price of housing?

Yes, it is these issues, but it’s a lot of other things as well. The one factor that most of the issues have in common is that they are all stresses and bottlenecks associated with our rapid growth rate.

There is a growing perception here that the economic boom which everyone appl-auded initially has not been an exclusively positive development. There are a lot of negatives as well.

As time has gone on, people have started to take the advantages of the Celtic Tiger for granted and the disadvantages are what they focus on now in their everyday lives.

These disadvantages can be things like being forced to buy a house in a country town miles from Dublin because you can’t afford one in the city and then facing a daily commute of several hours. Or childcare that is so expensive that there’s not much left from a couple’s second income.

Or having children in a school where classes have immigrant kids with language problems and teachers struggling to cope, so the Irish kids get less attention and may fall behind kids in other schools.

In last week’s polls, around 50% of people said they were dissatisfied with the government, and in spite of the endless stream of politically correct guff about embracing multiculturalism from government agencies here, a lot of that dissatisfaction is centered on the immigration issue. People deal with the reality as they find it, and the reality is not always as sunny as the picture portrayed in the government propaganda.

Rightly or wrongly, the high level of immigration here from Eastern Europe and Africa is seen as a root cause of the overcrowding and chaos in many areas, whether it is hospitals, housing, schools or traffic jams. Many people are starting to question whether keeping the boom going is worth it if it means such stress and strain in everyday life, and if it means losing the uniform and familiar society we once had.

They are asking the question also because there is a strong perception that those who are benefiting most from the boom and the high level of immigration and its associated cheap labor are the rich and connected in Irish society, not ordinary people.

And who is most associated with the boom? It’s Bertie. He’s a victim of his own success and that’s why Fianna Fail is being hammered in the polls.