Archive News
Constituency revision may signal the demise of Galway West’s five-seater
Date Published: {J}
It has been the source of much political speculation over the past year and there are now real indications that the days of Galway West being a five seat constituency could soon be coming to an end.
Senior Fine Gael sources say that it is inevitable and will form part of the Government’s promises regarding political reform.
In fact the Constituency Commission has received three submissions recommending that a sizable portion of the Galway West constituency be lumped in with Galway East, which would certainly add to the drama in both constituencies as well as presenting dilemmas for a number of candidates in the next election.
The commission will announce their decision in the summer on the exact number of seats that they intend reducing from the current Dail but over the past week the speculation is rife that Galway West will be one of those where the axe is likely to be wielded. Already a number of sitting TDs are looking over their shoulders and wondering what lies in store for them come the next election.
There are submissions suggesting that polling booths in Clarinbridge, Maree, Oranmore, Turloughmore and Lisheenkyle be transferred from Galway West to Galway East resulting in a shift of around 6,000 voters from one constituency to the other and it will have a profound effect on at least two candidates.
It is well known at this stage in political circles that Senator Fidelma Healy Eames is increasingly anxious to contest a seat in Galway East as it is felt that she may have difficulty getting on the Fine Gael ticket in Galway West as current Mayor of Galway, Hildegarde Naughton is likely to stand again for the party along with sitting TDs Sean Kyne and Brian Walsh.
It is possible that Fine Gael would only run three candidates in a four seater Galway West constituency and this may not include Healy Eames as the party hierarchy were not particularly impressed by her ‘strop’ following her elimination in last year’s general election count and this ultimately earned outsider Sean Kyne an unexpected seat.
This defeat did not sit well with Healy Eames and many expected her to ‘throw in the towel’ and bow out of politics but to her credit she rose from the political ashes and reclaimed her seat in the Seanad and it is known that she will make another bid for Dail Eireann come 2016. But the landscape could be dramatically changed by then.
There is intense speculation that, if Galway is to lose a Dail seat, Healy Eames will throw her lot in with Galway East and will use her strong family connections with Moylough as a platform for her election bid. But even in an enlarged Galway East constituency, and even if her Oranmore and Maree base was behind her, she is unlikely to get much of a welcome for the likes of Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon in Carrabane or Deputy Paul Connaughton jnr. in Mountbellew.
But if Fine Gael enforces a gender balance rule, then it could mean that the party may have little option but to add her to the Galway East ticket but her chances of winning a seat against the might of the Cannon and Connaughton camps would seem unlikely while her vote winning capabilities would also be compromised by the likely presence of Labour’s Senator Lorraine Higgins in the field.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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