Alan Kelly has announced that he is resigning as Labour leader after less than two years in the role, saying the parliamentary party had lost collective confidence in his leadership.
Alan Kelly's career has been defined by an abrasive swagger and the ability to surprise and shock.
It was fitting then perhaps that he should choose a day when an international crisis was raging to light up an otherwise calm Leinster House.
But his less than two years at the helm of Labour did not electrify the party's fortunes.
There was the highlight of Ivana Bacik's by-election win in Dublin Bay South last year. However, the opinion poll trends nationally suggested Labour is consistently polling below 5% support.
The Tipperary TD's time in charge coincided with the pandemic and this in many ways stymied one of his best abilities. That is the job of going out and holding meetings at branch level to rebuild the party.
Instead, he was left trading punches with the Government on points of public health policy. His approach, on one occasion, likened by the Taoiseach, to that of John Wayne.
The past, and its negative conations, was never far away either, especially his effusive championing of water charges during his time as minister in the Fine Gael and Labour government from 2011 to 2016.
The end, when viewed to the prism of the meticulous building of his career, was not without pathos for his supporters.
There were intense electoral battles but Alan Kelly has never lost an election
They would remember those days when that career took significant steps forward.
Like the summer's day in 2008 when the then Senator Alan Kelly defeated a revered Labour Party dynasty to contest the European Parliament elections.
This was the moment he swept aside the challenge of Arthur Spring, who was dignified in defeat as he and his uncle Dick, the party's most successful leader, watched on.
In the conference hall of the hotel on the outskirts of Cork City where the event was held, there was paraphernalia emblazoned with Alan Kelly’s name displayed on every seat.
It was a colossal effort for a selection convention.
The day illustrates in microcosm many of the attributes that the 46-year-old Portroe native brings to politics.
They include his diligence and tenacity when it comes to finalising every detail coupled with his trademark irreverence.
In the years that followed, there were intense electoral battles but Alan Kelly has never lost an election.
And he maintained that 100% record when he became the 13th leader of the Labour Party in early April 2020.
His pitch to party members then was that Labour needed to become a campaigning party once again.
He also placed an emphasis on the need for a radical change of approach in the areas of health and housing.
The journey to that victory was arduous one at times.
In 2016 his colleagues did not allow him challenge for the role, when Brendan Howlin became leader.
He no longer believed power was a drug
There was a fear in the party then that Alan Kelly's often blunt approach to problems could in the words of one TD see Labour "crash on to the rocks".
But in 2020 Alan Kelly's stock was higher as dozens of party figures came out early to back him.
Cork East TD Seán Sherlock told the campaign launch that Alan Kelly had in recent years displayed a maturity in how he approached politics.
In a further demonstration of this political evolution, the Tipperary TD himself would tell those gathered in Buswells Hotel that he no longer believed power was a drug.
This is a reference to a comment he made in a newspaper interview in 2016.
Alan Kelly got his first taste of political power almost a decade earlier in the Seanad. But his big break came when he was elected against the odds to the European Parliament in 2009.
His time in Brussels was short lived, however, as he returned home to win a seat in Tipperary in the General Election of 2011.
A junior ministry in the Department of Transport followed before he was appointed to cabinet as minister for the environment in 2014.
He would also become deputy party leader when Joan Burton succeeded Eamon Gilmore.
His time in cabinet was far from smooth, however. He was the minister tasked with implementing water charges.
Despite the huge opposition to those charges, he was just one of seven Labour TDs who held his seat in 2016.
He became a prominent figure on the opposition benches in the years that followed.
His quest for answers on issues ranging from allegations made by garda whistleblowers to the CervicalCheck controversy saw him become the dominant force on the Dáil Public Accounts Committee.
It all ensured that he had a high profile even as support for his party fell further in the recent general election.
But that profile was not enough anymore to rebuild the State's oldest party in its ongoing battle to make itself relevant again.
Read the story: Alan Kelly resigning as Labour leader
