Santa shows up early for î Brolch‡in as Greens wring concession from FF

Date Published: {J}

Well, it just shows – you never know when your luck might turn in this game of politics. Last June, after a Local Elections defeat, the political future of Niall Ó Brolcháin looked bleak indeed, but now he is the Green Party nominee to fill a Seanad vacancy and the odds are stacked-up in his favour.

You see, only TDs and Senators can vote to fill two vacancies in the Seanad – and a deal was worked out between the Government parties (Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and former PDs), under which Fianna Fáil will take one of the vacancies, and the other will go to the Green Party nominee (in this case, the nominee chosen at the weekend is Ó Brolcháin).

All going according to plan, one seat will go to Fianna Fáil’s Councillor James Carroll, of Drogheda, who is being groomed as a possible FF candidate in Louth (to join Minister Dermot Ahern), now that Seamus Kirk TD has been elevated to Ceann Comhairle.

The plan is that the other Senate vacancy will go to Ó Brolcháin . . . it was the seat formerly held by Labour’s Alan Kelly, who had to resign the Seanad when he won a seat in the European Parliament in June.

The Greens wrung the deal from Fianna Fáil as part of the renegotiated Programme for Government, and, barring some extraordinary electoral accident, Ó Brolcháin should take his place in the Seanad after the vote by TDs and Senators on December 14.

Speaking to Ó Brolcháin at the weekend, he said he was delighted and honoured to be nominated for The Green Party. Understandably, he was a little bit cautious about any celebrations – just yet. After all, this was the man tipped widely to be a TD in 2007.

Ó Brolcháin had 10 years as a Green councillor on Galway City Council and stood in two General Elections in Galway West – where he got just over 2,000 first preferences in 2002 and over 3,000 in 2007. He was heavily tipped as a hot favourite to take a Dáil seat only a month prior to the 2007 General Election in an opinion poll produced by TG4.

That forecast he would be in the shake-up for the two final seats with Frank Fahey (FF), and Noel Grealish (PD).But, he survived to just the 9th count where he had 4,300 votes and was then eliminated.

At the time, it looked possible that, if he kept slogging away as a local councillor in Galway, he might be in with a shout as a potential Green TD. After all, Michael D Higgins (Labour) stood in the same constituency in 1969, ’73 and ’77 before he was first elected to the Dáil in 1981.

 Higgins lost that seat in 1982 and finally began a run of success as a TD for Galway West right from 1987 to the present day.

However, Ó Brolcháin suffered a colossal reverse for his political aspirations in the Local Elections last June when the Greens sustained an enormous defeat nationally in the Locals.

As a sitting councillor, Ó Brolcháin got just over 700 votes in the West Ward in Galway City. He was seventh in the first preferences but was a long way from the 1,400 quota and lost his elected base, the Galway City Council seat. He has been working since as a full-time official for The Green Party as a parliamentary secretary.

Ó Brolcháin has also been continuing with his constituency work and said at the weekend …. “in this politics business, you never know what’s around the corner. The party did badly in June but I believe it is still very much alive and active around the country and the issues just won’t go away. I would be honoured and delighted if I was elected a Senator.”

In the meantime, if this Government were to last another two years – who knows what changes there might be in Galway West. For instance, would Higgins be standing again? Would Fahey? Would Fine Gael’s Padraic McCormack?

INDEPENDENT MY AR**

Meanwhile, there was some ‘fighting talk’ in the background at that Fine Gael conference held in Galway last week – and one of the clear targets that emerged was that, as far as they’re concerned, Grealish may be standing as an Independent in the next General Election, but FG regard him as ‘a Government TD’.

Leading the attack was Fine Gael hopeful Councillor Padraig Conneely, who dismissed Grealish as “Independent my ar**”.

He said Grealish and Mary Harney, the last remnants of the Progressive Democrats, had consistently supported the Fianna Fáil-led Government which had led the country into the ruinous financial situation of the past year.

“When it comes to election time I have no doubt that Noel Grealish will have posters up around the place with lines like ‘keep an Independent voice in Galway West’. The fact is that he and Mary Harney have supported this ruinous Fianna Fáil-led administration in every single Dáil vote for years. He is Fianna Fáil in all but name and it is time that this lie was nailed,” Conneely said.

Conneely said that in the past week, for instance, Phil Hogan TD had put down a Fine Gael motion in the Dáil calling for a freeze on all commercial rates in a bid to give retail businesses around the country a chance of survival. But it had been voted down by the Government. So, the ex-PDs, who claimed to be Independents, were nothing of the sort.

“We in Fine Gael on Galway City Council – through people like myself and Councillor Brian Walsh – are involved in discussions here in Galway in a bid to freeze the rates for businesses. Involved in those talks as well are the three ex-PDs who now are supporting Grealish (Cllrs Declan McDonnell, Donal Lyons and Terry O’Flaherty), but in the Dáil, the ex-PDs can support a policy which is the precise opposite.

“It is time that Grealish came clean about precisely where he stands – we intend to make it clear to the electorate that he may call himself an Independent, but in fact he is a ‘Government TD’ like Frank Fahey or Éamon Ó Cuív and it is time he stopped this nonsense about being an Independent. Independent my ar**,” added Conneely.

Meantime, though Grealish has been playing his cards pretty close to his chest on precisely what ‘banner’ he plans to run under in the next General Election, it is quite clear that he plans to run as an Independent – and he has brushed off those approaches from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to join them.In the wake of the PD wipeout in the 2007 General Election, Grealish and Harney were the only two surviving PD Dáil Deputies. Harney kept her post as Minister for Health, while both herself and Grealish have proven rock-solid supporters of the Fianna Fáil-Green-Independents Government. Grealish has become a backbencher with an Independent label, and a considerable ability to get the ear of ministers.

It is hard to gauge precisely where his vote comes from, but Grealish with his 5,800 first preferences in 2007, must have looked carefully at the vote and analysed it when those approaches came to join Fianna Fáil (from Ministers Ó Cuív and Noel Dempsey), and then from some of the top people in Fine Gael who wanted him on their team.

The easier one to rule out must surely have been the approach from Fine Gael. For, though FG are on the up in the opinion polls, all of the Grealish family connections going back for years are in Fianna Fáil. Grealish himself started as a Fianna Fáil Cumann officer when he was in his teens, and, if he joined FG, he would lose a chunk of that support, plus whatever slice of FF support came to him when Bobby Molloy retired. Molloy, after all, had more than 20 years as a Fianna Fáil TD and then 16 years as a PD Dáil Deputy.

Grealish obviously gave a lot longer thought to those approaches to join Fianna Fáil . . . the word is that they would still like to have him on board, but, right now, does he really want to join a party which is running at just over 20% in the opinion polls and which is associated with the economic catastrophe of the past year? FF may be slightly less unpopular right now and they look like – with Green support – they could last a few years yet in office, but the memory of the Local and European Elections drubbing for FF is a little too fresh in the minds of many. Grealish has been keeping his powder dry but he won’t go to Fianna Fáil.

Anyway, they have enough problems in Fianna Fáil with the three likely candidates – Ó Cuív, Fahey and Cllr Michael Crowe – all battling for their own futures and wanting Grealish’s name on the FF ‘slate’ like a hole in the head.