It’s a changing landscape on Galway East political scene

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

Tradition runs deep in Galway East – and that means Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have dominated the constituency, sharing out the spoils over the decades.

But the 2012 boundary changes saw it lose huge swathes of territory in the north east of the county to a reconfigured Roscommon-Galway. As a consequence, it has been reduced from a four seater to three.

To add insult to injury, two of its sitting TDs Paul Connaughton and Michael Kitt saw their powerbases in Mountbellew and Castleblakeney being swept away under their feet.

Whenever the election occurs, it will give us an intriguing contest, which will be harder to predict than before. As of now, no one individual in the constituency can be said to be guaranteed his or her seat.

Like a lot of rural constituencies west of the Shannon, there has been a consistent pattern in Galway East where the two big parties have dominated. Fianna Fáil was the strongest traditionally.

In more recent times the spoils were shared with each party winning two of the four seats – although there were a few bumps along the way. Tuam independent councillor, Paddy McHugh, won a seat here in 2002 at the expense of Fine Gael. Even then he was from the Fianna Fail gene pool.

Like elsewhere, everything changed in 2011. Fine Gael won two seats with new candidates, Paul Connaughton junior and Ciaran Cannon, Micheál Kitt held onto a single Fianna Fáil seat and Colm Keaveney made the breakthrough for Labour.

The changes in the past four years have been huge. Connaughton and Kitt saw their bases being transferred into Roscommon. It involved a lot of hand-wringing for both as to where they would stand next time around. They decided to stay put. More recently, Kitt decided to call it a day.

The hardest hit though was Tim Broderick. Based on the Ballinasloe side of the constituency, he performed very strongly in 2011. He also won an extraordinary 3,400 votes in last year’s local elections.

But the constituency changes meant he could not have mounted any kind of campaign. If the boundaries had been unaltered, he would have been close to election. But the changes closeed teh door for him.

The other big change has been in Keaveney’s circumstances. He went in as a Labour TD and is now a Fianna Fáil Deputy, after a dramatic exit from his former party.

There were questions over how he would be received by the local organisation. In the event he came through the convention handily enough, seeing off the challenge of the two male candidates. Anne Rabbitte was automatically selected when a gender quota instruction was applied.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.