Political World
Kenny shows his ruthless streak to shake up Fine Gael landscape in Galway West
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
How can you evaluate Hildegarde Naughton’s elevation to the Seanad? A surprise comparable to Galway beating Armagh in Pearse Stadium last Saturday? Hmmm, not quite – more a surprise comparable to if London had beaten Mayo in McHale Park last Sunday.
The new Fine Gael senator has easily the most exotic name in parliament (Fianna Fáil senator Camillus Glynn retired in 2011) and is a politician with undoubted ability and a lot of promise.
From the Oranmore side of the city, she represents the western suburbs of the city, so her voter base potentially straddles both sides of the Galway urban area. She polled a respectable 3,606 (or a third of a quota) in the 2011 General Election, and wasn’t very far behind the three other candidates.
She has also been Mayor of Galway and with her musical background will give new meaning to the political spin-meisters desire to have an “all singing and all dancing candidate”.
I met her and her mother canvassing around the town of Ashbourne for Helen McEntee during her successful campaign in the Meath East by-election earlier this year. She certainly has the dedication and the perseverance and the smarts for national politics.
It’s not that Naughton doesn’t deserve her elevation – it’s just that if you were thinking about it coldly, there are many other places in the country in bad need of a strong Fine Gael presence.
Dublin North West – where the party has no TD – is one that springs to mind. Or Laois and Offaly where there will be two constituencies each with three seats the next time around – and Fine Gael would have a biddable chance of winning a seat in at least one.
Enda Kenny’s decision to appoint Naughton adds to a very healthy complement of parliamentarians from the two Galway constituencies – 14 in all, and 15 if you include Ronan Mullen). But her appointment is also very telling about Kenny’s thinking on two distinct matters – his attitude towards those who defied the party whip over abortion; and what his opponents say is his utterly cynical attitude to the Seanad.
On a strict and steely analysis of Fine Gael’s chances of electoral success in Galway West, the decision does not make a huge amount of sense.
The party already has two TDs in situ and a Senator who certainly believes that one of the two seats should have gone in her direction.
Moreover, the addition of a healthy chunk of South Mayo – nine electoral areas around Ballinrobe – coming into Galway West, there is also the prospect of John O’Mahony migrating south in the hunt for votes.
I’ve never been convinced that this is a serious option for O’Mahony. He would have to rely on a big Galway vote and that would mean an incursion into Sean Kyne country. I don’t believe O’Mahony will move in the same way I don’t believe Micheál Kitt will move from Galway East into Roscommon/Galway.
Even without O’Mahony it’s a crowded field. And while it was certain that Naughton would be a candidate in the next General Election, what Kenny has done has been to promote her into the second slot in the constituency after Kyne.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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