Palpable anger a sign of things to come for FF on election trail

Date Published: 19-Jan-2011

Fianna Fail may have got an advance taste of a rough and tumble election campaign to come when a meeting on the economy held in Galway on Monday night ended in bitter recrimination and had to be abandoned shortly before its scheduled conclusion.

The session, which was billed as economist Dr. Alan Ahearne, the special advisor to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, outlining the situation on the economy, turned into a slanging match and then a walk-out by angry students.

The air grew ugly with recrimination over who was responsible for the economic crisis and over the human cost, and anti-Fianna Fail chanting protesters stood on the stairs of the Clayton Hotel and in the foyer as the audience left.

The meeting had been organised by Frank Fahey TD but the air crackled with tension from the very start as members of the public shouted ‘rubbish’ from the floor to some of the remarks by both Deputy Fahey and Dr. Ahearne. As the meeting neared an end, the atmosphere became more and more heated.

It was during the question and answer session, as the meeting drew to a close, that the anger spilled over.

One man in the audience said they had heard an outline on the economy, but not one word on the human cost of the disaster, the suicides, the families without hope. “Ye should be ashamed,” he told Deputy Fahey.

A man in the audience who had repeatedly interrupted the speakers with cries of ‘rubbish,’ said that he had been a Fianna Failer all his life but he was ashamed that the country had been sold out to the Germans ‘without a shot being fired.’ He then stormed out.

Read full report in this week’s Connacht Tribune.