Today, I want to address the issue of the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis that took place last week. I speak not just as a former member, but because the 100th anniversary of the founding of that party should be cause for reflection on the history and development of this nation not just for current and former Fianna Fáil members, but for us all.

What struck me most was the distance not just in time, but in purpose, between the party that was founded in 1926 and the party that gathered last weekend. Its original programme was rooted in economic independence and keeping families rooted in the land. It was a vision of a State that would stand firmly on its own feet and yet, 100 years on, we find ourselves presiding over a crumbling agriculture sector, fuel protests driven by real hardship and an economy that is abjectly dependent rather than self-sufficient. There is a disconnect there that cannot simply be brushed aside as a consequence of the passage of time. I do not say that lightly nor do I ignore the many people within Fianna Fáil who continue to work hard and who believe in public service. The councillors, activists and ordinary members deserve better than what they are being given. They have been let down repeatedly by a leadership that has too often been improvisational rather than principled and managerial rather than ambitious. The contrast with the party's own history is stark. This was a party that, in the 1930s, when the country was far poorer than it is today, had the ambition to build entire towns. Today, we have record homelessness and a State that struggles to deliver even basic housing at scale.

That brings me to what I found most striking about the Ard-Fheis itself. There was a sense that the party is no longer entirely sure what it stands for. In seeking to be everything to everyone, it risks becoming nothing to anyone. It is not just about policy, but about tone. There is a growing perception that the leadership is more concerned with signalling its progressive credentials to a small urban liberal audience than listening to the instincts of the party's traditional base. That base was never abstract or ideological. It was practical, local and rooted in communities, work and family life. When a party loses that connection, it loses more than votes. It loses its purpose.

There is an historical irony to all of this. Fianna Fáil was born out of a split with a Sinn Féin that had become inward-looking, fragmented and detached from practical politics. Lemass himself later described it as a movement that had drawn in "all sorts of queer cranks", losing sight of the central task of governing with "people making speeches in favour of vegetarianism and the single tax". The uncomfortable question is now whether that description sits more easily with parts of modern Fianna Fáil than it might like to admit.