Two days after Christmas in 2014, I set out on a mission. I was in search of an answer to a brewing political question. Independents were on a roll. So, was there an opening for independents to form a coherent political force? I spent a freezing winter week touring Ireland to test the temperature. I met independent councillors from Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Galway and Sligo. And others on the road back to Dublin. In a few days — over the 2014/15 new year — thirty councillors offered their views face to face. Nearly all favoured a new departure where independents would co-operate nationally. And formally.

Some were rural, others urban. Some pro-choice, others pro-life. A number came from the Fianna Fáil gene pool, others had long-term associations with Fine Gael, or were disillusioned Labour, dejected Greens or even closet Sinn Féin supporters. Many had started political life as single-issue candidates. Independents were (and are) a mixed bag with various agendas. Detractors rubbished them as a motley crew.

It was the first of many similar journeys I undertook over the next twelve months. It led to the doors of current household names like Boxer Moran, Michael Collins, Seán Canney and Paul Gogarty, all independent councillors at the time.

Parallel to that, at national level, similar tentative moves were being made by sitting independent TDs in Leinster House. After the 2011 general election, a ‘technical’ group of sixteen independents had been formed to ensure that they had speaking rights in the Dáil. It included such personalities as the delightful left-winger Joe Higgins and the sometimes less delightful right-winger Mattie McGrath. We shared a few parliamentary facilities, but policy differences made political unity or consensus impossible.

Many independents shared a corridor in Agriculture House, attached to Leinster House. Sometimes that merely exacerbated tensions. Deputies Mattie McGrath’s and Catherine Murphy’s offices were opposite each other. The two deputies were barely on speaking terms. Mattie, a devout pro-life Catholic, posted a sketch of Pope Francis outside his office. Catherine, a passionate pro-choice agnostic, could not avoid passing it every time she entered or exited her room. No one believed that Mattie was unaware of the daily effect the picture of His Holiness would have on Catherine’s blood pressure. Catherine, in turn, had pinned on her door a picture of the victory celebration for the referendum on marriage equality in Dublin Castle. Mattie could not miss it, but it was certain to cause the already excitable Tipperary TD one of his familiar apoplectic fits.

Yet, within that group, Catherine Murphy and a few others saw opportunities for political reform. Herself a veteran of several left-wing parties, she found common ground with others, but not with Higgins’ far left or with Richard Boyd Barrett’s brand of socialism. Nor with Clare Daly, a staunch ally of Higgins before a spat threw her into the arms of another colourful independent TD, the ultra-maverick Mick Wallace. The independents had their own Bonnie and Clyde wing.

Catherine Murphy often spoke to several like-minded TDs, seeking a collective, more cohesive political muscle, based on a common radical zeal. In the middle ground of this disparate group stood more flexible, pragmatic politicians, including her former Workers’ Party comrade — then independent TD — John Halligan, newly elected TD Stephen Donnelly (known to some as Harry Potter because of his uncanny physical resemblance to J.K. Rowling’s hero), left-wing disabilities champion Finian McGrath, Michael Fitzmaurice from Roscommon, Tom Fleming from Kerry and me. None of us, so it seemed at the time, wanted to stay in opposition for ever.

Talks between Murphy, Donnelly, McGrath, Halligan and me had been progressing sporadically. Attempts at sorting policy differences were slow. Murphy and Donnelly wanted a political party structure with the accompanying rules and discipline; I and others wanted a looser alliance that gave independent members the right to free votes according to their individual consciences.

Free votes on matters of conscience had already propelled another player into the crowded independent/new party space. Lucinda Creighton, a former Fine Gael minister, had been ruthlessly expelled from the party in July 2013 as an objector, on the grounds of conscience, to Enda Kenny’s abortion legislation. She had been in exploratory talks with both Donnelly and me, but if the difficulties of whether to form a party or an alliance proved a fundamental obstacle, the problem of three runaway egos uniting behind one leader was thought to have been insuperable. The Ross ego, once described by journalist Mark Paul as ‘the size of Croke Park’, may have just pipped Donnelly’s and Creighton’s, but they ran me close.

Fine Gael and Labour, with an unassailable majority in the Dáil, watched contentedly. Opposite them in the chamber slumped a discredited Fianna Fáil. Alongside Fianna Fáil sat a group of sometimes articulate independents already splitting into warring factions. Sinn Féin was not then the force it is today.

Under that coalition, legislation was frequently guillotined. Oireachtas committees were controlled by Labour-Fine Gael majorities. The Dáil and the Seanad were rubber stamps. Unpopular legislation, arguably necessary because of the perilous state of the nation’s finances, was rammed through both houses. Fundamental changes, like the introduction of property and water taxes, were rushed through Ireland’s parliament with indecent haste. Fertile ground was being prepared for left-wingers and independents to foment discontent. Even the Greens, wiped out by their craven support for the previous Fianna Fáil government, managed to plug into the growing unrest. Huge marches in the streets against water charges spooked the Fine Gael-Labour regime. While the opposition was able to unite against the unpopular austerity measures, it split on a multitude of fronts when it came to agreeing a common platform. It proved impossible.

Opposition was an easy place for independent mavericks. It was not difficult to find reasons to oppose austerity, even if the various independents offered different reasons for doing so. Solutions, suggestions, proposals for common future positions prompted immediate splits.

Nevertheless, in early 2015 the political soil was perfectly prepared for the green shoots of an independents’ spring. The record success of independents in the summer 2014 local elections proved that their earlier surge in the 2011 general election had been no flash in the pan. Later in 2014, independent Michael Fitzmaurice had pulled off a surprise coup when he succeeded Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan by winning the Roscommon-Galway by-election. Flushed with victory, Deputy Fitzmaurice took only a few weeks to declare the need for a new political force or party. Presumably with himself at the helm. He told TheJournal.ie that he had spoken to twenty-five to thirty like-minded people. Another mega-ego had entered an already crowded arena.

Suddenly 2015 looked likely to be the year of the political adventurer. It was. No sooner had I arrived back from my countrywide tour of independents than Lucinda Creighton broke cover. On 2 January 2015 the worst-kept secret in Irish politics was revealed. Lucinda announced that she would have something else to announce in due course. She would be launching a new political party. But not until March. She held a press conference with consumer champion Eddie Hobbs and an Offaly councillor, John Leahy. Remarkably, no other TDs were sitting on the platform.

Within less than a week, on 6 January, both Fitzmaurice and I appeared on RTE’s Prime Time to announce that we were joining forces to form an alliance of independents. According to the programme, others to have expressed their enthusiasm for such an idea (but not for either Fitzmaurice or me) included Deputies Denis Naughten, Noel Grealish, Stephen Donnelly, Tom Fleming, Mattie McGrath, Finian McGrath and John Halligan. Prime Time headed the programme with Fitzmaurice speaking of me: ‘He seems to be a very reasonable guy in any talking I’ve done with him and yes, I think we can work something together.’

That was the night the Independent Alliance was born. And it was almost stillborn. Not all the dots had been joined up when Prime Time jumped the gun. The independents identified as possible allies had been talking in silos. They had never met in a room together with a common purpose.

While Fitzmaurice had been speaking separately to rural TDs and councillors, Finian McGrath, John Halligan and I had been in exploratory conversations for over a year. I had been in a separate dialogue with Stephen Donnelly for several months. There had been little contact between Donnelly, Fitzmaurice and Halligan. Rivalries erupted within twenty-four hours of the RTÉ programme. Several of Prime Time’s supporters of an alliance of independents, in theory, ran for cover when confronted by the reality of the names of their prospective allies.

Within days of the programme, three of the independents — Donnelly, Naughten and Grealish — met in secret in Donnelly’s Dáil office and resolved to torpedo the Independent Alliance project at birth. Naughten was always a non-runner for our group because he and Fitzmaurice were deadly rivals in the same Roscommon constituency. In any case, Naughten had hedged his bets on Prime Time, carefully approving the idea only ‘in principle’. Donnelly was unwilling to accept Fitzmaurice because he believed the Roscommon man would be a political obstacle to his ambition of linking up with left-wingers Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall. At the time, Donnelly was fond of proclaiming his social democratic convictions. Many found his protests unconvincing because he hailed from a career in McKinsey & Company management consultants, hardly a bedrock of radical economic thinking.

Grealish and Naughten went to ground. Donnelly bolted. He privately explained to me that Fitzmaurice lacked the quality of the sort of TD he wanted to include in his gang. He felt that Naughten outstripped Fitzmaurice in polish and ability by a country mile. Six months later, in July 2015, after tortuous weeks of talking, he fell happily into the more comfortable, urban and conventional hands of Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall when the trio launched the Social Democrats.

Donnelly’s defection was a blow, but five TDs held firm. Tom Fleming, Michael Fitzmaurice, John Halligan, Finian McGrath and I decided to embark on a great experiment. We were seeking to be part of an independent group in the next government.

The fault lines were drawn. Five independent TDs wanted an independent group without a whip. Donnelly was a cut above the rest of us, in search of a cerebral, social democratic home. Lucinda Creighton was hell-bent on a right of centre anti-abortion party. Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall were debating a new social democratic initiative. Other rural TDs — Denis Naughten, Mattie McGrath, Noel Grealish, Michael Lowry and Michael Healy-Rae — decided to remain aloof in their solo positions, detached from the rapidly forming new groups.

It was time for the talking to stop. A general election was expected in autumn 2015. The new Independent Alliance needed candidates to sign up. The long march to shape an effective army out of a group of independent councillors, unused to political discipline, had begun.

The five deputies and our new recruit, Senator Gerard Craughwell, met in my office every week. We needed money, so contributed €1,000 each to start the operation. Over the following two months, we met dozens of sometimes curious observers, sometimes eager disciples. As an introduction to test the waters, independents from around Ireland were asked to join us in the Bridge House Hotel, Tullamore on Saturday, 27 March. The agenda was broad. The attendance of over eighty people included fifty councillors. As one of our supporters, lawyer Tony Williams, pointed out on that day, we had more councillors there than there were Labour councillors in the entire country. Something was stirring, but that something might be difficult to mobilise.

Finally, Lucinda Creighton had formally launched her party two weeks earlier on 13 March. We were just ahead of the rest of the posse. In June, the Social Democratic Party was formed with no less than three co-leaders: Catherine Murphy, Stephen Donnelly and Róisín Shortall. The field for new groupings was officially crowded.

During that summer, my parliamentary assistant and the only de facto member of staff for the Independent Alliance, Aisling Dunne, completed another tour of Ireland to meet councillors and sign up candidates for the forthcoming general election. She kept the momentum going.

Preparations intensified for a possible autumn election. In September 2015, we hosted our second conference, this time at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone. During the summer we had managed to persuade Senator Feargal Quinn to join us as our chairman. Feargal gave us a huge boost. He was beloved of the media, a widely popular, highly successful entrepreneur. Despite his dazzling business success, he was modest, understated and deeply committed to the independent voice in politics. He had been a fellow university senator with me for nearly twenty years. Nevertheless, I was surprised that he accepted the post so readily because he never engaged in the rough and tumble of domestic politics. The rest of us were street fighters. Feargal had no ambitions for a Dáil seat but, I suspect, might have eyed Áras an Uachtaráin from a dignified distance. Other contributors on the day included Eamon Dunphy, Sinead Ryan, Marian Harkin MEP and Dr Jane Suiter. The Independent Alliance was thriving.

It was a good line-up. Jane Suiter, a lecturer at Dublin City University, was a former economics editor of the Irish Times. Marian Harkin, a long-time independent member of the European Parliament, and Sinead Ryan, a leading journalist on consumer affairs, were heavyweights in their own fields. They spoke with authority and expertise, adding gravitas to the Athlone conference. But Eamon was different. He was box office. The councillors in Athlone on that day, many of them general election candidates, had come to hear Eamon. So had the media.

He didn’t let them down. He promised to support and vote for the Independent Alliance in the coming election. The celebrity football pundit was mobbed afterwards by enthusiastic candidates, seeking to touch his garment and asking him to launch their campaigns. He agreed and delivered in several cases. Eamon Dunphy wanted to be a player.

A few murmurings arose later that evening when it emerged that Eamon had already been flirting with Sinn Féin. He had even been touted as one of that party’s candidates for the coming election. But that is Dunphy, a political chameleon par excellence.

Eamon’s invitation to the Athlone gig was solely my responsibility. I knew it would guarantee us media attention, although there was always a danger that he would say something outrageous. He easily could have damaged us just as we were on a roll. As luck had it, he didn’t.

Eamon Dunphy was probably my oldest friend on the planet. He accepted the gig, at least partly, out of friendship. We had travelled a long road together. Some of it was political, much of it personal. I had been in many scrapes with him over the previous thirty-five years. In our younger days we were as wild as wolves, bonded by booze, nightclubs, journalism and politics. We had enjoyed many all-night sessions, ending up in either the infamous Manhattan café on Dublin’s Kelly’s Corner or, worse still, in the early houses on the river Liffey’s quays. When I ditched the booze, we went out to dinner regularly, in restaurants all over Dublin.

In 2001, Eamon and I challenged the board of Eircom together, using his highly successful Last Word programme on Today FM to mobilise support against the directors. Our campaign culminated in a massive small shareholders’ revolt with 4,000 people baying for blood at Eircom’s annual general meeting in the RDS.

In 2009, I was honoured when Eamon asked me to be his best man at his second marriage, this time to RTÉ staff member Jane Gogan. A seriously talented head of drama, she has generally been a mellowing influence on the seventy-five-year-old tearaway.

In 2011...