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FINE GAEL is “done apologising”, a cabinet minister said last night at the end of what was widely described as a positive and productive parliamentary party meeting.
Fine Gael held a four-hour meeting at at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin city centre yesterday afternoon.
TDs and Senators were briefed on the economy and Fine Gael’s election strategy ahead of the resumption of the Dáil and an election which is expected next year.
As the political season resumes in earnest today, Fine Gael will be looking to move on from the myriad of crises that impacted the party’s support in 2014.
“We’re done apologising, it’s time to move on. We made stupid mistakes last year. There’ll be no repeat of them this year,” the cabinet minister said.
Yesterday’s meeting, described as a mini-think-in, saw TDs and Senators divided into workshops that were devised by the party’s increasingly influential strategist Mark Mortell.
Afterwards, deputy leader James Reilly said there had been a “very good debate” on issues such as housing, childcare and health. He claimed there had been no dissent at all in the meeting.
“I think it’s critically important that that should be our focus because every single job means financial independence for another person, for their family,” the Children’s Minister told reporters afterwards.
It means more money circulating in their community, it means a restoration of dignity and self-esteem and it also means €20,000 less to spend in social protection.
In seeking to regain the agenda party figures repeatedly insisted last night that much of yesterday’s discussions focused on how to make people feel the benefit of the economic recovery, with few wishing to discuss any internal disquiet over Fine Gael’s torrid 2014.
There was no discussion at yesterday’s meeting on the possible return of former strategist Frank Flannery with TDs divided over the merits of the former Rehab Group lobbyist coming back into the fold.
Several ministers insisted that the Fine Gael national election strategy committee, headed by Frances Fitzgerald, is already in place and working effectively, indicating there would be no formal role for Flannery.
Reilly added: “He’s a man of considerable experience, as we know, and he will have some great ideas to put forward perhaps, and he can do that in the normal way.”
Party chairman Dan Neville insisted that as an ordinary member of the party Flannery “is inside the tent”. But other TDs were sceptical about his possible return, one deputy describing him as “toxic”.
Though the party has not identified exactly how many candidates it will running in the next general election, a source said that Fine Gael was still gathering information from around the country as to who will and will not be running. There are indications that several TDs may not seek re-election for various reasons, including retirement.
One rural-based backbencher said that those who do want to be re-elected would be primarily focussed on ensuring that from now until the election.
They said this would mean that the majority of their time would be devoted to their constituency in the coming months.
“We have 15 months to save our jobs so we won’t be hanging around Dublin on a Thursday night. Our whole week will be geared towards the weekend and getting on the doors,” the TD said.
- Órla Ryan contributed reporting
A good password should contain at least 8 characters.
I’ve gone for : SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs
Thank god mine is not there, it took me ages to come up with joanTHE moan…
Are you serious putting your password up….
Most used passwords from people from Cork are the same as in this list but adding the word “boy” like “123456boy”
123456bai you mean ..
And for the ladies it’s 123456 girl
Most common FB password – youokayhun
Pm me hun.
No dellcomputer is not there, so I’m safe
It’s best to avoid any family or pet names/dates. open a dictionary & find an obscure 7 or 8 letter word, learn everything about it so you don’t forget it, then add one or two numbers at the end, eg zamindar47
Generally using a dictionary is a bad idea, as lots of hacking software uses a dictionary to find passwords. So fire_Android+The42 is a lot worse then for instance hshjseuuebd even though it only has one character type. One thing that is actually safer. Is to have a really long password say 30 characters long with mixed character types, and write it down and keep in your wallet. Your Wallet is going to be far less likely to be stolen by hackers than your password cracked
My password is so clever no one will ever guess it
stuohy
I can see your disdain for using a dictionary, by your comment.
your password is still vulnerable to advanced dictionary attack (yes, that’s a thing).
Take a phrase that’s memorable to you, and not obvious to outsiders (something you say every day).
Lets say it’s “I love the journal, except for the comments”. Use this to form the base for your password, taking the first letter of each word:
Iltjeftc
Now use a sequence of 4-6 numbers which is easy to memorize, but not obvious like your date of birth. Perhaps it’s an old pin code for a card you no longer have.
Iltjeftc12345
Your sequence of characters, while not truly random, is far less vulnerable to a dictionary attack, and you have a good length of password and a randomized digit sequence to help protect it.
I saw this a while back.
Now I’m wondering how many of us are using
Zamidar47
A sentence that includes a percentage.
Covers all bases (according to Edward Snowdon).
Like “Mary says celibacy is 99% effective”
Mary is a slut.
Mary is 99% a slut
Something like
s5Td9#Hy4k$
But I would never remember it….
Superman is also a popular choice.
I used to have Superpandaman, my nickname was panda in case you were wondering
Mine is 10987654321 so I’m alright.
date of birth backwards!
mine is abcdefg.
oh shite now everyone knows
trustno1 is an old reliable.
And I really hope people get that reference.
Use a different password on every site. Avoid sites that limit the length of your password, three mobile for example max ten characters. That should NEVER be one of the rules when entering passwords.
that’s a lot of passwords.
I have a common password, at least, for garbage sites I don’t trust but wouldn’t give much away. At that level I’m more concerned about their storage of passwords than I am the strength.
Truekey password manager. 2 factor authentication and unique passwords for every site without having to rember them all. http://www.truekey.com
Never liked the idea of password managers… too many eggs in the one basket.
If you have a briliant memory then fair play. But typically people end up using the same password on all sites which is another eggs-in-one-basket situation except that one of thse sites is probablybstoring the password with weak hashing or worse – in plain text.
Pick a changeable password. One method is to pick a random word like epiphany and change the third letter to the first letter of the site you’re using. So for Facebook it would be epfphany. Add numbers and capitals as required.
Or two random words like epiphanyhorse
I have my password as ‘incorrect’ so I’m always reminded if i forget it.
Still remember password for mainframe in college. L3FTBJ.
Cannot spot difference between number 2 & 24! Am Imisaong somwthing?
The ‘o’ is a zero ’0′.
No guest on the list??? People are learning!
Use a password manager like lastpass to create and remember your passwords. It uses TNO security to encrypt your database. Then you only need to remember a handful of -pass phrases-. Use 12+ character sentences with no spacing. Caps, numbers, and special characters are less important cryptographically than length but some services require it so put one number, cap and special in.
When they interviewed serious hackers they used social engineering to make the hosting company send a new password or they compromise your PC via free wifi hacks or exploits in script so it doesn’t matter what you type
Use special characters like @ or # or ^ as well as upper and lower case letters and numbers in passwords. Most modern systems allow blank spaces in passwords as well…. “1394 T!ckEt$ t0 Go” – Don’t use this example!!
Take a line from a favourite song then use the first letter from each word to create a password.
You’ll always remember the song.
My favourite password is….. The pen is in Joan’s mouth, can get that wrong with The penis in Joan’s mouth lol
That damn spacebar lol.
have your say