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THE publication of confidential Labour Party market research in this newspaper last weekend generated plenty of comment about Pat Rabbitte's brigade, and boy do they need it. Elsewhere in the private document, the TNS/MRBI researchers conclude that "at a national level, recall of specific Labour figures was relatively low". Pat Rabbitte and Michael D Higgins were widely known but that was about it. The researchers also found that "spontaneous recall of Labour's role in previous governments was low".
One focus group respondent summed it up:
"Oh, I'd say it was a coalition, maybe Labour and Fine Gael, in the early '80s. . ."
After some probing the participants mentioned the Rainbow coalition but none remembered the first Fianna Fail/Labour coalition. This led the researchers to conclude that "as such, the controversy which surrounded Labour's sharing power with a party they were perceived to have campaigned actively against is largely forgotten".
A FF/Labour coalition after the next election was not considered "a possibility at the moment" due to Labour's preelection pact with Fine Gael and Rabbitte's attacks on Fianna Fail. Never say never, we say.
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YOU ARE HERE: 19 March 2007 / tribune.ie / 2006 / 02 / 05
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