LabourÕs by-election disaster is a sign of tough times still to come

Date Published: 03-Apr-2013

 There are lies, damn lies and by-elections – and in many ways, by- elections tell you very little about things that are to come. But conversely, they can be useful weathervanes for the storms that lie ahead.

Like most other by-elections held since the foundation of the State, the Meath East by-election had its own peculiar circumstances.

A sitting TD had died. Shane McEntee was very well liked because, in essence, he was a very likeable guy: friendly, emotional and decent. Plus, it was especially sad and poignant, given that he, a relatively young man, had taken his own life.

There was always going to be a strong sympathy factor.

Meath, despite all the changes that have taken place there in a generation, is still an innately traditional county.

Sure, it’s a vastly different place to the Meath that my mother and her siblings grew up in well over half a century ago. They lived in a small village called Ballivor and some of the family and relatives lived in equally small villages closer to Dublin like Ashbourne and Ratoath.

Now Ashbourne and Ratoath are large towns, satellite downs for parents who are whizzing down the 20 kilometres of motorway that separates them from Dublin. Even Ballivor (almost an hour away from the capital) has a fair sprinkling of long-distance commuters.

In fact, the M1, M2, M3 and M4 motorways have made most of the county accessible for commutes. The radio ad that once said "Navan, only an hour from Dublin" is now obsolete. On the multi-laned speedways, it’s 45 minutes tops.

Many of those parents are Dubliners themselves. And in every of the vast housing estates we visited as we followed by-election candidates, we experienced the problems that have become common since the crash of late 2008: negative equity; unemployment and slashes in pay cuts for the many public sector employees who have made Co Meath their home.

Yet, still, despite that, Helen McEntee of Fine Gael got 38 per cent of the vote. It’s very difficult to analyse how every component of her vote was made up. Fine Gael spinners were twirling the tops furiously from mid Thursday afternoon claiming it was all down to her excellence as a candidate and voter approval for Government policies despite the headwinds of the property tax letters arriving into people’s doorsteps.

She was a good candidate in her own right; not just an indolent son or daughter trading on a late father’s name. And sure, a percentage of the Fine Gael vote would have reflected core supporters and others who approved of their policies. But my own view is that the sympathy factor was the dominant one. In other words, if Fine Gael had run a really good candidate who wasn’t a McEntee (Mairéad McGuinness for example) I don’t think they would have won the by-election.

And if you accept that the sympathy factor (people voting out of respect for her father) it leads to an interesting paradox. Everybody, including all us in the commentariat, had neatly split the constituency of Meath East into two: the more traditional and rural North and the vast commuterville that was the south.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.