I'd never heard of a LAR before this week, that is apart from Lar Corbett. I didn't know what it was, whether it was a he, a she or an it, or whether you could manage to eat a full one. And now this week, with the birds falling out of the trees with the sunburn and us driven to distraction by a boat full of millionaires holidaying alongside Mutton Island, Fianna Fail has decided to unleash the LARS on a generally unsuspecting public.
All around us in the villages and communities around the county, LARS are being born, being groomed for LARdom. They are going about their normal duties every day but at nighttime, they meet in groups, talk about how they can be better LARS and that in time, a matter of months, they will be able to shake off the tags of LAR-dom and get a different tag.
The concept of the LAR came to my attention this week when the Fianna Fail press office started to lovebomb us with press releases about local issues in the city and county. It was surreal. People I had never heard of calling for potholes to be filled and hedges to be cut. They were condemning this and condemning that and doing it with such an authority, I thought they were fictional characters from a TG4 drama about politics.
To fill you in, the LAR stands for Local Area Representative which is Fianna Fail's way of terming people who they hope will be candidates in next year's elections, but who have not yet gone through the formal convention process which will probably be held this autumn. So they might be a candidate some day, they might be a councillor some day, down the road they might be a TD, but for the time being, they're just ordinary Joe Soaps like you and me. But this week, they have felt honour bound to get on their high horses about a range of local issues and kick off on their road to the election.
Right now, the LARS have about as much political say as any of the rest of us, so sending out press releases saying 'LAR Johnny Murphy calls for a new light on the pole at the end of the village' is no different from you or me calling for it, and bad and all as things are, I’m still not angst-ridden enough by dodgy potholes or ill-lit village ends to get to that extreme.
This group of LARS tends to be (mainly ) unelected party members who are acting as party representatives usually (but not exclusively ) in areas where the party lacks local representation following poor results in the 2009 Local Elections and 2011 General Election.
What it does show however, is that there deep plans afoot for the rehabilitation of Fianna Fail and that these plans are based on creating a whole new layer of candidates who through involvement in local community affairs with local people will develop the sort of trust that has not been associated with the party over the past half decade.
So in essence, LARS are half-hatched Fianna Fail politicians who over the next few months will go on to become candidates and eventually councillors by this time next year. We tell you this in case one might call to the house and say they’re a LAR, so there’s probably no need to call the guards or set the cat on them. But, you couldn’t be up to them, with their new titles. Now, altogether now, rise and follow LAR-lie.
