ABSTRACT
The 1951–1954 administration has strong claims, says the historian Joe Lee to be considered the worst de Valera government’. It contained only one new face, and ten of its twelve members had first entered the Dail in 1925 or before. The campaign proved even more issueless than usual. It was generally assumed that the opposition parties would form a fresh coalition if the numbers allowed this, so the question of government formation, faute de mieux, became the central issue, as was to happen at a number of subsequent elections. Fine Gael’s morale was still on an upward trajectory in the wake of its period in government between 1948 and 1951, and it was bolstered by the return to the fold of Independent TDs James Dillon and Charles Fagan along with the acquisition of Oliver J. Flanagan, the idiosyncratic but energetic Laois-Offaly poll-topper.
