Fine Gael’s high hopes of Castlebar dominance
With the pace of local events beginning to pick up noticeably, the dust is finally starting to settle on what the list of runners will be in the Castlebar area for the county council elections. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael began to mould their teams this week, but with the caveat that further additions to each panel might well be expected before the white flag is raised in the first week in June.
Sean Bourke’s final confirmation that he will contest the county council, but not the town council race, clears the picture for Fianna Fáil. His decision means almost certainly that Aiden Crowley, already having been nominated, will decline, leaving the outgoing Al McDonnell and Bourke, together with Blackie Gavin and the newcomer Michael Feeney, to represent the party. There will be doubts, however, at the strategy of running three candidates within the town boundary, and Crowley himself has warned of the danger of making the same mistake as in 2004. That election saw Crowley, Iarla Duffy, and George O’Malley split the vote, fragment a quota, and throw away a certain seat, all because of poor strategic planning.
On the Fine Gael side, last Monday’s selection convention yielded a team of Cyril Burke and Henry Kenny, the outgoing councillors, to join Eugene McCormack and current Mayor of Castlebar Kevin Guthrie, with Brendan Henaghan the rather surprise loser when the delegate votes were counted. With the party quietly savouring expectations of taking four seats out of the seven on offer, the door is still open for the addition of another name to the selection. Past experience would point to Johnny Devaney of Lahardane as the most obvious nominee to garner all those loose votes in the northern end of the electoral area. However, others would remember that, having lost his seat in 1999 and performing poorly enough in 2004, he would now find it difficult to find the winning touch again.
With seven seats to be contested this time in Castlebar, Fine Gael is clearly in the driving seat. In the election of 2004 the party managed to turn a deficit of 1,900 votes against Fianna Fáil five years earlier into a 600 vote surplus. With the Enda Kenny resurgence still working its magic, and Fianna Fáil in dire straits, that target of four seats may not be such an exaggerated proposition. In a town with such a high proportion of public service workers still smarting and angry over the pensions levy, still waiting in the long grass, it will be a brave Fianna Fáil canvasser who will take to the streets and the estates of the town to seek the voters’ favour.
If there is a consensus between the backroom activists of both major parties, it would be that Michael Kilcoyne is sure to take one of the seats up for decision. It is not the kind of speculation which Kilcoyne himself would be encouraging, being well aware that nothing is certain in politics, but his all-so-close effort in 2004 augurs well for June. Equally, both parties are too readily inclined to dismiss the prospects of Harry Barrett of Labour, or Therese Ruane of Sinn Fein, both of whom may poll far better than conventional wisdom would suggest. Barrett, in particular, will be buoyed by the continuing rise of Labour in the national polls.
With 15 weeks to go, it may be all a tad too early for predictions. However, it would be a given that Al McDonnell, with a renewed stretch of territory to draw from, should perform exceptionally well. Likewise Sean Bourke, in spite of his celebrated rift with the Flynn faction, should have enough experience and goodwill to retain his seat. But that is about as much comfort as Fianna Fáil can rely on at the moment. Fine Gael will easily retain its present holding of three seats, with McCormack the likely successor to Paddy McGuinness, joining Cyril Burke and Henry Kenny in the chamber of Mayo County Council.
With Kilcoyne as near a cert as there can be, that leaves Fine Gael with three, Fianna Fail with two, Independent one, and one to fill.
That final seat will be a battle to the death, with the likelihood of those two old pals, Gavin and Guthrie, slugging it out to the final bell. If that is the way it falls, be prepared to see Fine Gael take an unprecedented domination of local politics in Castlebar.
