If John McGuinness is a maverick, I'm James Garner. The Fianna Fáil backbencher for Carlow-Kilkenny has recently been milking the implosion of his party and the death (and debt) of Ireland for all his worth. And, in fairness, he is not alone amongst his colleagues, who are distancing themselves from the stricken ship Fianna Fáil faster than you can say John Gormley. McGuinness has seen the economic collapse as an opportunity to cast himself as some kind of honest broker, a noble truth-teller in a world gone mad. If there's a right way and a wrong way to do things, John's the man who'll lead us to the path of salvation. He's even written a book about it.

I read it over a couple of days a few weeks ago to see what McGuinness's prescription for Ireland was. And I must say I'm none the wiser. He does, for sure, make a great welcome for himself, casting himself during his time as mayor of Kilkenny as the latest in the long line of historic achievers going back to the dim and distant past. There's a terrifically exciting story about how he wangled a telephone from the town clerk and lots of stuff about the public service which is high in generalities but lacking very many specifics. After finishing the book, it was clear to this reader at least that John McGuinness was sacked as junior minister not because he was a thorn in the side of underperforming civil servants and of a useless tánaiste – his version – but because he was a general pain in the arse.

That McGuinness takes himself so seriously (and is taken seriously by many who should know better) as a harbinger of a more honest future is another reminder that it will not be enough that Fianna Fáil loses the next election; it must be destroyed and dispatched to oblivion for the damage it has done, and continues to do, to this country. Anything more than 30 seats for Fianna Fáil in the next election would be yet another blow to Ireland's hopes of long-term recovery as it would raise the possibility of the party regrouping over the next 10 years, returning to power, and destroying us again.

Because that's what Fianna Fáil does, that's what Fianna Fáil is. I was making this point on local radio last week when I was accused of being wise after the event, of blaming Fianna Fáil for stuff that had never been mentioned during the boom, when all was Spanish apartments and dog perms. But, of course, it was mentioned. It just wasn't listened to. While Fianna Fáil was winning three elections in a row during the boom period, posing as the guardian of a modern, wealthy, thrusting Ireland, many people – this columnist included – were banging a silent drum, articulating a widely ignored message: Fianna Fáil almost destroyed Ireland in the 1980s and would finish the job if it wasn't removed from power. We warned that Bertie Ahern was dodgy, that Charlie McCreevy was a feckless spendthrift, that Brian Cowen was an empty canvas on which others could write whatever plan they wished, and that Fianna Fáil backbenchers were a bunch of preening wideboys who couldn't be trusted with an éclair never mind an economy.

But we were the spoilsports, we were told, the left-wing pinkos; we should have gone off somewhere and killed ourselves.

Fine Gael and Labour would have done the same things, I was told on the radio. They would have made the same mistakes had John Bruton been able to win the 1997 general election and keep Bertie Ahern from power. We'd be exactly where we are now, broken, hopeless, unsure whether we have reached the bottom or whether there is still a long way to fall.

There's no way of ever proving or disproving that contention, of course, which is a pretty handy situation for the people articulating it. All you can say to them is that the economy was in decent shape when Bruton handed it over and that while people do go on sometimes about Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being Tweedledum and Tweedledee – the great cliché of Irish politics – the personalities who make up both parties are entirely different. There is a reckless, risktaking, selfish, win-at-all-costs mentality in the Fianna Fáil DNA that simply isn't there in Fine Gael, whose exuberant dullness would have been ideal in managing an economic boom. In Fianna Fáil, the individual TD comes first, then the party, then the country. The result over the last 13 years has been a bunch of individuals high on their own power and sense of self-importance, swaggering around Ireland and the world, hoovering up champagne and compliments in the Galway tent, making sure that their developer pals and financial providers were looked after. The result of that we see all around us.

This is no time for the blame game, we are often told these days. We must look ahead. The point, of course, is that looking ahead without identifying the culprits and making them pay would be an entirely short-sighted exercise. We can only confidently embrace the future if we come to terms with the past. The destruction of Fianna Fáil is part of that reckoning. With the IMF and others in charge of the country for the next few years, that's what the February general election will be all about.

RTÉ was right to cut off vincent browne's rant

RTÉ was criticised in some quarters for abandoning its coverage of last Sunday's press conference in which the Brianstrust explained that we'd applied for a bailout. The broadcaster went off to an advertising break for a few minutes and then returned with the Nine O'Clock News.

I saw no great problem with that decision. When RTÉ left the press conference, Vincent Browne was doing what he often does on these occasions – making it all about himself.

During the last election, he ranted and raved at Bertie Ahern as Fianna Fáil launched its campaign; he used a recent Late Late Show celebration of Johnny Giles to plug his TV3 show and last Sunday, there he was again, completely unaware of the difference between shouting at a Taoiseach and investigative journalism.

RTÉ had nothing to gain by sticking with his ranting. It did right to take its ad break and return with some proper political analysis during the news.

ddoyle@tribune.ie