Kenny plays it fast and loose with the mn‡ t’ – and heads off to see Angela

Date Published: {J}

The Fine Gael candidates in Galway West last week must have been wondering what hit them when over 300 people turned up to a meeting in protest against the FG policy on the Irish language as it had been outlined by Party Leader Enda Kenny on Raidio na Gaeltachta.

If by some chance Fine Gael in Galway West are ruled out of a second seat in the five-seater by a mere bundle of votes, there will certainly be some in the ranks of the ‘true blues’ who will point the finger squarely at Kenny and his intervention in the Gaeltacht.

However, from the opinion polls, FG seem to have two quotas anyway, though who will win the two seats is anyone’s guess – with Councillor Sean Kyne in the lead (15 per cent), Brian Walsh (seven per cent) and Hildegarde Naughton and Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames coming in at six per cent each, according to that poll in the Sunday Independent.

There is some head-scratching going on in relation to the poll because of the persistently high performance in the figures of the Connemara candidates – for instance, Independent Tom Welby comes up at seven per cent.

It is a superb performance and means that he cannot be ruled out of a seat. In fact, days before the poll was published, he had a few bob on himself in the bookies.

However, back to Enda Kenny and the mna ti. FG have a colourful history in relation to the search for votes in Connemara. The FG candidates – Fidelma Healy-Eames, Sean Kyne, Brian Walsh and Hildegarde Naughton – have been ‘raised’ on the belief that one of the keys to the party winning a second seat in Galway West is that FG must get a vote out of Connemara, and a hunk of that must come from the Gaeltacht.

So, there was near despair among some in the ranks last week when Enda Kenny said on Raidio na Gaeltachta that compulsory Irish would be dropped for the Leaving Certificate when his party was in government.

It sparked an instant reaction among the Colaisti Gaeilge in Connemara, not to mention the hundreds of mna ti who keep students as part of a ‘tourism-education’ industry which is reckoned to be worth as much as €14millions to Connemara each year.

In some cases, the earnings from the summer students are the difference between households surviving, or not.

Both Fidelma Healy-Eames and Sean Kyne, who have high hopes of taking a vote out of the Gaeltacht, pointed out – correctly – that our methods of teaching spoken Irish leave a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to the ability to converse in the language after years in school.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.