FF shows united front in quest for two seats

It was 8.34pm when Éamon Ó Cuív finally rocked up to the Menlo Park Hotel last Sunday.

Fianna Fáil’s sitting TD in Galway West was over an hour late for the General Election campaign rally of his sole running mate, Galway City Councillor Ollie Crowe; and many of the 200 Soldiers of Destiny in attendance were heading for the hills.

Dev Óg hopped up on stage, grabbed the microphone, and began speaking. It stopped the party faithful in their tracks, and many who had already left the room of the city hotel, started to file back in. He apologised twice (as Gaeilge and in English) for his delay in getting there – he was canvassing in West Connemara and then attended a funeral in Maam Valley on the way back in.

And Ó Cuív then told the local Fianna Fáilers what they wanted to hear: two seats in Galway West is a must. “One is no good,” he said, holding two fingers up in a ‘V’.

A complaint levelled at Ó Cuív in the last two elections was he was too strong a vote-getter and didn’t pull in a running mate, in a constituency where Fianna Fáil historically held two seats pre-2011, and three seats, back in its heyday.

Fine Gael, in one of the vagaries of proportional representation, won two seats in Galway West with fewer votes than Fianna Fáil in 2016. But fighting talk from the ‘King of Connemara’ showed they are determined to reverse that result.

“We want two seats. The people of Connemara are getting the message – that if they want to change the Government, they have to give us the extra seat here,” said Ó Cuív to applause.

And the number of attacks directed at the main party of Government showed that Fianna Fáil is targeting the second seat held by Fine Gael in this five-seater.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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