Sitting Roscommon-Galway TD Eugene Murphy has expressed his "surprise" that NUI Galway graduate and Roscommon county councillor Orla Leyden has been added to the Fianna Fail ticket for Roscommon-Galway at the February 8 General Election.
Cllr Leyden was elected to Roscommon County Council in 2004 and has been re-elected in four consecutive local elections serving the Roscommon Municipal District and Roscommon Electoral Area.
She said she would be running a "poster free campaign in the interest of the environment" and focusing on issues of housing and health. "Frontline services are not being delivered under Fine Gael," she said. "For many young families and people, home ownership remains an unattainable ambition. Fine Gael’s housing policy has been a complete failure."
However, Cllr Layden's addition to the ticket has not been exactly welcomed by Dep Murphy, who said it had "quite frankly taken me by surprise". He claimed he had been told by Cllr Leyden, and her father, Sen Terry Leyden, that she was "not going to run and that they would do everything they could" to retain the seat here in Roscommon/Galway. "That’s politics," he said, "and I wish Cllr Leyden well."
The move has only hardened the resolve of Dep Murphy to retain his seat. "I will be fighting all over the Roscommon/Galway constituency," he said. "I will fight for every single vote in this election. I have lost a considerable part of Roscommon with almost 7, 500 votes gone into the Sligo/Leitrim constituency, so I won’t be settling for an area that’s been given to me. I intend to fight for every single vote."
He said his campaign priorities will be the future of rural Ireland, reducing hospital waiting lists, delivery of projects such as the Sacred Heart Hospital in Roscommon and the 50 bed unit for Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe, services for people with disabilities, farming and agriculture, balanced regional development, climate change, revitalisation of rural towns, and affordable childcare.
