This edition of Cloch le Carn looks back at Séamus Brennan’s career in Fianna Fáil and also at the ups and downs within the party. Séamus Brennan had Fianna Fáil blood running through his veins. He was reared in Salthill and his father served as Director of Elections for the party in Galway in the 1960s. His professional political career began at the age of 25 when he was appointed as General Secretary of Fianna Fáil by Jack Lynch in 1973 and after visiting America to check out the political campaign of Jimmy Carter in 1976 he was instrumental in the landslide victory of Fianna Fáil in the General Election the following year. He was the brains behind their presidential-style campaigning, opinion polls, slogans and even a specially commissioned pop song. Séamus Brennan’s reward was being appointed to the Seanad and he stayed as a Senator until he won a seat in the 1981 General Election in the Dublin South constituency. The early 1980s was a turbulent time politically in the country and within Fianna Fáil. Séamus was a prominent member of a group of politicians within the party who tried unsuccessfully to wrestle control from Charles Haughey. He supported George Colley, and later Desmond O’Malley, in various leadership heaves throughout the whole era. It was widely expected that Brennan would join the Progressive Democrats when they were founded by O’Malley in 1985 but instead he remained within Fianna Fáil. He reconciled with Haughey was eventually made Minister for Transport, one of six Cabinet positions he held until 2008. In 1992 after Albert Reynolds succeeded Haughey as Taoiseach, Brennan was one of the few ministers in Haughey’s Cabinet who remained in Reynolds’ new government. In his capacity as Minister for Transport he introduced a two-airline policy which gave Ryanair exclusivity on certain routes and he completed work on the roll-out of the Luas in 2004. Brennan was also known as a very good negotiator, and these trait