Is history about to get its own back on Fianna Fáil?

While other august bodies had their say, these three had most of the angles covered.

This is not to say they were necessarily overtly coercive but simply all-seeing and everywhere. That is if you wanted to count yourself a true Gael, the odds were you had to doff the cap to at least two of the three.

That world is a memory now. Not so distant that we remember it in faded sepia, but for millennials at least part of a past that bears no resemblance to the Ireland they inhabit.

The Catholic Church, it hardly needs saying, was the biggest beast in the room. Every room that is, most especially the bedroom. The Ireland of the 20th century wasn’t a theocracy but it wasn’t for a lack of effort by bishops and parish priests.

The GAA was an enthusiastic custodian of this broad moral vision, imbued with a unashamedly manly nationalistic ethos. It saw itself as much more than an athletic organisation and, through its infamous ban of foreign games, created a very efficient system of sporting apartheid.

Fianna Fáil was the political party that had a symbiotic relationship with the other two. De Valera’s party dominated power. From 1932 to 2011 – when it all went horribly wrong – the party had been in power for 61 of the State’s 79 years.

Of the three, only the GAA is still central to Irish life. It has transformed itself, shedding its culturally isolationist and reactionary impulses. It has evolved into an inclusive and progressive organisation, a few old diehards aside.

The pace of the church’s decline hardly needs regurgitating here, other than to note that as a society we seem to have gone from obsequious obedience to naked hostility with uncharitable haste.

The shrinkage of Fianna Fáil is more nuanced, though hardly less dramatic. With its poll ratings in the bargain basement, disgruntled backbenchers have recently been calling for the head of leader Micheál Martin.

But a move to oust him before the transfer of power to Leo Varadkar in December was always only mouth.

Deputies know that the next election is make or break. Get it wrong and Fianna Fáil is certain to have its vote ruthlessly cannibalised by the unstoppable Sinn Féin bandwagon.

The irony of that won’t be lost on a party which is fast approaching its centenary. Éamon de Valera founded Fianna Fáil by dramatically walking out of a Sinn Féin ard fheis in 1926, over a controversial vote on the taking of seats in the Free State Dáil.

The old Sinn Féin withered on the vine and within six years Dev’s Soldiers of Destiny were installed in power. For ever more, or so it often seemed.

History might be about to return the favour.