Deferral gives FG more time to crunch the numbers in West Galway contest !

Date Published: {J}

Putting back the Fine Gael selection convention in West Galway for a few weeks will at least give the party a few weeks to crunch the numbers in an area where their own opinion polling shocked them a few weeks ago by showing a second Dail seat was pie in the sky.

In the meantime, on Friday night last, Labour got on with their business – picking City Councillor Derek Nolan in their bid to hold the seat which Michael D. Higgins has occupied without of break since 1987. Michael D. has turned his attention to the Presidential Election.

This is one they can’t lose – the seat built from nothing in the sixties and seventies, It started with Michael D. Higgins on 1,100 first preferences in 1969 and turned into a Dail seat in 1981. Higgins held it in February 1982, lost it in November 1982, regained it in 1987 … and held it ever since.

There was surely never a better time to carry the ‘Labour brand name.’ If the FG opinion poll is to be believed, Higgins would have topped the poll at 18 per cent. But Labour in West Galway are not leaving this one to chance . . . and they might just take an uncomfortable glance over their shoulders at Independent Councillor Catherine Connolly, a former Labour member and someone who has the kind of individuality and persistence which Michael D. himself showed over the years.

In that recent FG poll a few weeks ago in Galway West, she came up at 7.5 per cent with Michael D. on the ballot paper … and my memory is of an election not so many years ago when Michael D. came from just around that figure in the first preferences, to hold on to his seat with clutches of transfers. There is even a gruding admiration in some in FF that she has made political connections into Connemara which could give her a vote there.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael are a bit baffled. Their number-crunchers might welcome a delay until December 5 . . . for I’m sure they still don’t quite know what to make of the situation revealed in that private FG opinion poll carried out recently.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.