Heaven forbid Mousey, I'd love to see them out of office.....sooner rather then later. If fact FF is one of the few parties that I have never once voted for, not at General Elections, European Elections, Local Elections or Presidential Elections......I have never put any class of a preference against the name of any Fianna Fail candidate. If the earth opened up and swallowed the lot of them, I would rejoice.
But all I'm saying is.......don't place too much hope in the other lot either......a majority FG government might be fine and well, but if you had the Labour tail wagging the FG dog and the Trade Union fleas nesting in the Labour tail, the job of implementing any sort of radical political program to dig us out of the hole might be very difficult to achieve.
There is probably a lot of merit in Llamedos's suggestion of a national government where Minister's are appointed on the basis of relevant "vocational" experience in the real world, and stop pushing square pegs into round holes, but I fear that the likelihood of a cabinet of all the talents would also end up fracturing along party or ideological lines. Self interest and self preservation is just too strong and ingrained here for politicians to put the country and nation first. Remember single party FF government was one of that party's long held political core principles, FG and Labour had their own difficulties in hanging together when the going got though, and Labour, after going into a Government with FF and despite walking out of it later, were severely punished by the electorate for what many regarded as political treason. FF destroyed their own coalition with the now defunct PDs.
In general elections, there is not much point in the electorate returning a new Dail full of primary teachers, solicitors and publicans etc to run the show, when what is required are also people with business experience and expertise in various fields such as innovation, ICT, international markets, etc. The problem is that those sort of people, such as the Michael O'Learys, Michael Smurfits, Denis O'Briens etc would be totally frustrated by the antiquated political system and bureaucracy, plus they have the ability to do a lot better for themselves outside of politics.
It is wrong however to blame the politicians solely for the mess. If the people elect a bunch of incompetents lacking real world experience, ideas or vision, it's the people's fault. All 166 of them belong in the Dail because we put them there....even the Jackie Healy Rea's and Martin Ferris's of this world, if that be the wish of the good burghers of Kerry.