Editing Progressive Democrats (section)

===Harney leadership===
After the collapse of Reynolds' first administration later in 1992, O'Malley retired from the leadership of the party. Following the 1992 general election, [[John Dardis]] (Agricultural Panel) and [[Cathy Honan]] (Industrial and Commercial Panel) were elected to [[Seanad Éireann]] as part of an election pact with their politically polar opposites [[Democratic Left (Ireland)|Democratic Left]].<ref>[http://www.ucc.ie/en/government/Staff/LiamWeeks/Research/DocumentFile-64652-en.pdf Chapter 10 The Subterranean Election of the Seanad] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200413000635/http://www.ucc.ie/en/government/Staff/LiamWeeks/Research/DocumentFile-64652-en.pdf |date=13 April 2020 }} Michael Gallagher and Liam Weeks UCC</ref> Mary Harney became the new leader after a bitter electoral contest with [[Pat Cox]] who later left the party. Harney was the first woman to lead any of the major Irish political parties.{{efn|[[Margaret Buckley]] had led Sinn Féin between 1936 and 1950, but during a period where they held no seats in the Dáil and didn't contest elections.}} Harney served as [[Tánaiste]] (deputy prime minister) from May 1997 until September 2006 after a return to government in coalition with Fianna Fáil.

In the [[2002 Irish general election|2002 general election]] the party doubled its Dáil seats to eight, although its share of the vote declined slightly to 4%. In total, the Progressive Democrats participated in coalition governments four times, on each occasion with Fianna Fáil (1989–1992; 1997–2002; 2002–2007; 2007–2009), and also with the [[Green Party (Ireland)|Green Party]] from 2007 to 2009.

In 2005 Michael McDowell publicly took a firmly anti-republican position and named Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris as members of the IRA Army Council. The convention in Irish politics at this time was not to accuse Sinn Féin politicians of being members of the Army Council, in doing so McDowell broke with convention. He said that until the IRA disbanded Sinn Féin could not be involved in government, North or South.<ref name=":0" />