INSIDE POLITICS - PREDICTIONS

Monumental cock-ups don't much bigger than Fianna Fail's today and last night. There hasn't been such a massive gaffe since, well, Jim O'Keeffe made his first (and last) appearance at a FG press briefing.

This sad tale for FF began on RTE's Q and A last night.

During a row over the Government's colocation proposal Rabbitte said:

"Nor can (the Government) tell us even up to tonight how much will the tax breaks cost when when tax is foregone."

Cowen had not given this figure before.

His opening marks were singularly unfortunate:

"The FOI stuff that you are getting are out of date unfortunately like Jim O’Keeffe’s figures."

I'll come back to them in a sec.

He then went onto say.

"In relation to the question about the relocation, the fact is that gross it’s about 70m a year for seven years and net of buoyancy after that it’s about E40 million."

His difficulty was this: The figure he gave out was wrong.

And it was obvious today that none of the three senior ministers at the FF conference had seen Cowen the night before. They kept on quoting the E40m net figure and were completely snookered when pressed by the media on the discrepancy between this figure and that put out by Cowen the night before.

Eventually a note was passed up but the Ministers were unable to decipher it to the satisfaction of the press corps.

And then Colin Hunt, Cowen's special adviser, intervened to explain the figures. He accepted that Cowen had been incorrect to state E70m the night before. Hunt explained.

“He said 70m and he said 40m net; it should have been 57m and 40m net.”

The three FF Ministers were - as they say in Dublin - 'scarlah with embarrasment'.

Oops. What a blunder! It made Cowen look like a bit of a dolt too. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. He was the guy who had led the charge against FG and Enda's contract.

On Q and A the previous night, not 30 seconds earlier Cowen had been scoffing at Jim O'Keeffe whose blunder at a FG press briefing on crime had backfooted Enda Kenny during his TV showdown with Bertie Ahern.

Now, Cowen himself obviously didn't have the right document to hand.

Bertie had to admit on Six-One News - where, boy, did Bryan Dobson give him a grilling - that:

"He said the wrong figure"

The opposition parties sniffed revenge and clearly took great pleasure in its moment of payback time.

For here was the man who berated Jim O'Keeffe having his own Jim O'Keeffe moment. And here was the party which condemned Fine Gael for using unelected advisers rather than politicians to run its press briefings now having to have three of its most senior ministers baled out by an, erm, unelected adviser.

Hubris, anyone?

INSIDE POLITICS - FF's JIM O'KEEFFE MOMENT

Well, Fianna Fail had their Jim O'Keeffe moment today.

The week before last O'Keeffe conceded at a Fine Gael conference that crime figures had not doubled between 1995, as claimed by his party, but had stayed the same. He then tried to distinguish between low-level headline crimes like bicycle theft and serious crimes like rape, murder and serious assualt, which he said had increased.

But the damage was done. And it was compounded when in the course of the TV debate Enda Kenny said O'Keeffe - his party's justice spokesman - had not been in possession of the correct statistics. It was a bad moment.

Since then, the FF big swatters have swung into action, especially Mr Brawny from Offaly. They've slid in hard on the 2,000 extra cops claim, the 2,300 beds and the allegation that FG and Labour's tax proposals would benefit the top 3% of earners.

No matter if the claims are true or not. The name of the game is to get them out there, to sow seeds of doubts about the ability and competence of Enda, his party and its partner. Did Enda ride all those tackles as well as he could? It seems the public didn't think so. And FG and Labour took too long to counter-attack and do it with the ferocity of the FF push against them since last Thursday.

It was only in the wake of yesterday's poll that they came out fighting. Rabbitte and Richard Bruton called the FF 3% tax claim a blatant lie. But was it all a little too late.

And then just as Fianna Fail was getting into a hubris frame of mind and patting itself in the back for punching holes in opposition policies, it went one step too far and punched a massive hole in one of its own policies.

The three Fianna Fail ministers at the top table today - Dermot Ahern, Mary Hanafin, and Seamus Brennan - opened their mouths just long enough to take one foot out and put the other foot in.

The context was this. Last night on Question and Answers Brian Cowen had finally come up with a figure, telling how much co-location would cost the taxpayer. €70 million per year over seven years was his response.

Then this morning, Brennan and Hanafin said it would cost €40 million between now and 2011. When asked to clarify this, total confusion reigned. Seamus started to talk about it being difficult to pin down the cost on tax breaks. When pressed further, a note was passed up from the sides.

And finally, Colin Hunt, the FF economic guru, had to step in from the wings to explain it all. Not everybody in the press corps were sure who he was. But he explained that the project would cost E47 million per year but the net cost would be E40 million. He also said that Cowen had referred last night to E40 million being the net cost.

There were a couple of snide remarks from journalists asking if Mr Cowen had had the right statistics to hand last night.

And predictably FG and Labour quickly went to town on it, with the usual barrage of verbal heavy artillery.

We're less than 48 hours away now. Tomorrow is a broadcast moratorium day. Embarrassing as it was for the Government, did it come a little bit too late.

INSIDE POLITICS - THE BIG DEBATE

It wasn't lacklustre. It wasn't boring. Sure, we didn't have the quips of last night or the venom. But it was more muscular and robust than I had thought it would be.

Kenny's performance was very impressive, especially compared to the guy who was wiped by PrimeTime six years ago. He held his own, scored a couple of points, and may have quelled many of the questions surrounding his competence. He also came across as a decent man, less aggressive than Mr Ahern.

But Bertie Ahern edged it. He was put on the back foot every time Miriam O'Callaghan put it to him that the Government was in power for ten years, that we had record resources, but had failed to deliver key promises in health, crime etc. He was particularly uncomfortable on
1. Cystic fibrosis and the fact that the mortality rate is much higher in the Republic than in the North
2. In admitting the mess surrounding John Daly, the prisoner in Portlaoise who made a
Funnily enough, when it came to his personal finances and BertieGate, he dealt with that comfortably - no issue emerged. Of course, he was aided by Kenny who again reciled from getting engaged on this issue.

Where Ahern scored most heavily was on the following matters in order of ranking.

1. Forcing Enda Kenny to give Jim O'Keeffe a public dressing down when he admitted his justice spokesman did not have the correct statistics to hand last week.
2. Successfully planting a seed of doubt over FG's promise to deliver 2,000 extra guards. Is it 1,000 or 2,000? It seems it's 1,000 patched on to 1,000 already committed by this Government. This was a biggie.
3. Bringing up a point raised by Bryan Dobson last week about FG's promise to deliver free health care to under 5s. Ahern argued it would be impossible to implement, something Kenny never rebutted wholly.
4. He also had a fruitful sally at FG's tax plans. Kenny never got round to responding to Ahern's argument that FG's tax reform plans would most favour the richest 3% of voters.
5. He also raised some doubts about the ambivalent costings and time scales of FG's and Labour's plan to provide 2,300 hospital beds. In fairness, Kenny responded strongly with a direct attack on the Government's co-location plans.

Other areas produced mashed or inconclusive results. Both showed themselves capable of drizzling us with stats on the economy without delivering a killer line. Kenny dealt competently with one of his Achiles Heel questions - his lack of experience in Government. He also threw in a bit of Irish at the end which did him no harm at all.



But these debates are not only decided by moot points or small incremental victories. The body language and demeanour, composure, confidence and decency, are also important. And Kenny did come across as an essentially decent man. While he may have lost on a close points decision in my view, there was nothing to suggest that he doesn't have the wherewithal to become Taoiseach.

Earlier in the day, there was talk that Ahern and FF were all at sea and had given up the ghost. This will have galvanised him and those around him. In what is shaping up to be the closest and most determinate elections for a long long time, this was a determined and defiant (at times too aggressively defiant) performance by that may put FF back in the chase.

It was good stuff. From the off. In fact, meatier and more robust than last night. And both leaders, both parties will have taken their positives from it.

But my own opinion remains the same - Ahern shaded it.