The release of a 'secret list' of 17 women who are believed to being fast-tracked as Dail candidates for the next election has further eroded Enda Kenny's dwindling authority within Fine Gael.

Though not all of the women will be running, the disclosure of the list provoked a growing level of fury among Fine Gael backbenchers, who had not been told of its existence.

The Sunday Independent has learned the Taoiseach was openly confronted by Galway East TD Paul Connaughton about the issue at the final Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting before Christmas.

Connaughton bluntly told his party leader: "If you think this will be tolerated you can forget it."

Another senior Fine Gael TD, who did not want to be named, told the Sunday Independent: "Forget Shatter or Irish Water; this revelation is the most destabilising thing to have happened internally within Fine Gael in the last six months. The Taoiseach is f**king around with lads who already believe they are as good as finished. Now another nail is being hammered into the coffin with the women trouble."

The Fine Gael leadership subsequently insisted it does not intend to run all of the women on the list, and that the selection of the women was just part of a normal training course.

But this received a chilly response from one TD who noted: "Briefing sessions with [Fine Gael's chief economic advisor] Andrew McDowell and sessions with Terry Prone's Communications Clinic is not exactly training for the council."

The row has widened tensions between the Fine Gael HQ and the party's increasingly fractious TDs.

Fine Gael Senators are also understood to be furious after being privately told by HQ that "there is no point in any-one except female senators seeking a nomination; otherwise the door is closed."

Speculation is mounting within the party that at least one high-profile senator is planning to defect unless he secures an election nomination.

However, the party hierarchy will have no choice but to impose a raft of female candidates on sitting TDs.

Under legislation devised by former Environment minister Phil Hogan, political parties must meet a gender quota of 30pc or lose half of their State funding. In the case of Fine Gael, the bill would be as high as €2m.

But adding extra candidates means the party may be vulnerable to even more seat losses than current projections suggest.

Like Fianna Fail in 2011, Fine Gael are already running too many candidates for too few seats.

This means that adding a dozen extra female candidates to the ticket would, in the absence of any TDs resigning, split the vote even further.

The list of potential female Fine Gael candidates includes Maria Bailey, the daughter of former Dublin County Board chairman John Bailey in Dun Laoghaire where FG has two TDs. Kate O'Connell in Dublin Bay South, where Eoghan Murphy is the Fine Gael TD, may replace Ms Lucinda Creighton on the Fine Gael ticket.

Fine Gael TDs in marginal constituencies such as Louth (Fergus O'Dowd and Peter Fitzpatrick) and Kildare (Martin Heydon) will be warily looking at the list of new trainees.

These include new councillors Fiona McLoughlin Healy in Kildare South, Sharon Tolan in Meath and Louth-based councillor Dolores Minogue.

Frank Feighan, the party's sole TD in Roscommon-South Leitrim, will also be anxiously watching the progress of Maura Hopkins, who ran for the party in the recent by-election to replace Luke Ming Flanagan.

Sunday Independent