Local Green Party Senator Niall O Brolcháin lit a fire under the election campaign in Galway West last evening by lashing the other parties for choosing as their candidates ‘lawyers, bankers, developers and teachers”.
The underfire senator who faces an uphill battle to mount a challenge for the last seat in the election tore into the other parties when he announced that despite what people were saying, he would “fight tooth and nail to win that last seat”, in what he felt was the most open race locally for many elections.
In the last general election, O Brolcháin was a favourite to win a seat, but trailed away on polling day and this time with his party facing extinction and a hostile electorate, angry with the Greens for propping up a discredited and despised Fianna Fáil, the former mayor has pledged to come out fighting.
He feels the other parties are showing blatant disregard for the electorate by choosing candidates from professions which he feels have become discredited during the Celtic Tiger era.
“The other parties in Galway have shocked me with their choice of candidates. I think they are sending out the wrong message by fielding candidates who are bankers, lawyers, developers, and teachers.”
This will be Sen Ó Brolcháin’s third general election and he has vowed to “fight tooth and nail for the last seat in Galway West”.
“While I have been written off by the pundits and the politicians, I am not going to roll over and play dead,” he said. “It is up to the people of Galway to decide who they elect, not the pundits and politicians.”
Sen Ó Brolcháin said Galway is in a position to develop 8,000 new jobs in the green technology sector over the coming years and as such “a strong Green voice is needed” as Galway should have representatives “who know what they are talking about”.
“As the only representative in the Oireachtas with a background in systems and technology, I am ideally placed to take advantage of the next boom which will be in green technology,” he said, adding that whole areas of the city have been ignored by parties selecting candidates.
“I am also shocked that they have completely neglected the Salthill/Knocknacarra area,” he said. “As far as I am aware, I am the only candidate actually living in this very important area of Galway city,” he said.
In betting odds released last evening, Sen O Brolcháin was revealed to be a 25/1 outsider to win a seat in what will be the most open General Election in Galway West for decades. Full details of the odds at John Mulholland Bookmakers are contained in a story on Page 2, but the full betting on who will win a seat in Galway West is as follows:
Ó Cuív 1/16
Grealish 1/10
B Walsh 1/5
Healy Eames 2/7
Connolly 8/13
Nolan Evens
Crowe 5/2
Fahey 3/1
Naughton 6/1
Kyne 6/1
E Walsh 20/1
O Brolchain 25/1
