FINE Gael rolled out the big guns for its general election campaign launch at a forklift factory just outside of Monaghan town today.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Tánaiste Simon Coveney, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, local Cabinet minister Heather Humphreys and the EU Affairs Minister Helen McEntee were all at the Combilift factory to kick off the campaign.

Here’s some of what we discovered about how Fine Gael intends to campaign over the next three weeks.

1. Not a Dublin-centric party

Mr Varadkar is keen to emphasise that Fine Gael is not, despite many claims to the contrary, a party that ignores or does not care about rural Ireland by paying a visit to Combilift.

It is a successful and growing Irish business near the border that employs around 600 people and exports to 80 countries. It gave Fine Gael an opportunity to showcase its job-creating credentials.

This company is frequently highlighted by Ms Humphreys, the Business Minister, as a local success story in her Cavan-Monaghan constituency and evidence of Fine Gael creating jobs in the regions. Expect more Fine Gael events outside the capital as the campaign progresses.

2. Brexit, Brexit, and more Brexit

As Independent.ie revealed on Monday, Fine Gael will absolutely hammer the Brexit drum in this election and insist that it is the only party that can be trusted to handle the second half of the UK’s protracted departure from the EU.

Mr Varadkar gave a stark portrayal of the alternative to himself, Mr Coveney and Ms McEntee – the Brexit Team.

“If Micheál Martin, Sean Haughey and Lisa Chambers, had been handling the negotiations for Brexit or the negotiations in Northern Ireland would they have done a better job?” he said. “I don’t think so. But that’s the decision that the Irish people have to make now.”

Ms Humphreys was more scathing, describing them as the “Fianna Fáil Junior B Team”, while Mr Coveney talked up Mr Varadkar as the “key interlocutor” who broke the Brexit stalemate with his famous Wirral summit with Boris Johnson last October.

Mr Varadkar also claimed Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher’s threat to vote against the Brexit withdrawal deal shows the party cannot be trusted on the issue.

You will be sick of hearing Fine Gael talk about how well it has handled Brexit by February 8.

3. But maybe not the best team all over the park

Mr Varadkar will happily talk up the credentials of his Brexit Team, but so far he is reluctant to talk about the merits of his Housing and Health Ministers who he could not guarantee would be returned to those jobs after the election.

We asked him if a vote for the Fine Gael team included putting Eoghan Murphy back in the Department of Housing and Simon Harris back in the Department of Health.

“Who’s appointed to what position in the next cabinet is for another day,” he said. “I won’t be making any appointments to cabinet today or promising any appointments to cabinet today.”

4. Apparently it’s not Fine Gael’s fault if there’s a second election

Amid some idle chat in political circles about the prospect of a second election if a government is not formed after this one, Mr Varadkar sought to get ahead of the issue by claiming Fine Gael would not be to blame for such a scenario.

He stood over his position that Fine Gael will not facilitate a Fianna Fáil-led minority government if it [Fine Gael] is the largest party in the 33rd Dáil. It “simply would not be democratic for the largest party to somehow put into power the parties that come second, third, fourth or fifth”, Mr Varadkar.

This conveniently ignores the fact that since the 1970s Fine Gael has led a government three times when Fianna Fáil has been in opposition despite being the largest party in the Dáil.

Mr Varadkar claimed smaller parties would be to blame if the failure to form a government causes a second election.

“I will say [after the election] that ‘we are the largest party’ – if we are – and ‘we’re the ones who want to talk to those other parties about forming a government’. And I’m sure they will want to talk to us, I doubt they will want to cause a second election and that’s what they will be causing – not us,” he added.

5. A better start than 2016 – but danger here

Four years ago, Fine Gael’s general election campaign got off to a horrible start in a cramped hotel conference room a stone’s throw from Leinster House where Enda Kenny didn’t want to discuss economic jargon. The party never recovered.

By contrast this was a more professional and assured start from Fine Gael and its Brexit Team (are you sick of hearing that phrase yet?) with a clear message in the spacious conference room of a company that is a genuine Irish success story.

However, the optics of posing for pictures while sat on a forklift on the same day that a homeless man was seriously injured as his tent was removed from a canal in Dublin will not be lost on many of the Taoiseach’s critics and could imperil what has been a positive start to the campaign by the government party.

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