*Caimin Jones, Gerry Flynn, Eugene Drennan and Páraic McMahon.
FIANNA FÁIL are set to win back a seat they lost in the 2020 General Election and elect two TDs in Co Clare while Cllr Joe Cooney (FG) is on course to prevail in his first Dáil bid.
On Friday, the people of Clare will head to the polls to elect the county’s four TDs to represent them in Dáil Éireann.
A record-long ballot paper of twenty candidates are in the field with the election count to take place on Saturday and potentially into Sunday at Treacy’s West County Hotel in Ennis. It will be the first election for Rita Considine as returning officer who has succeeded Pat Wallace.
On the latest episode of The Electoral Chair, The Clare Echo’s political podcast, founder of Clare FM, Caimin Jones, Gerry Flynn who served as a county councillor from 2004 to 2024 and Eugene Drennan who masterminded the election successes of James Breen (IND), Dr Michael Harty (IND) and Verona Murphy (IND) previewed the outcome in Co Clare.
Clare’s outcome will be “simple enough,” explained Flynn who predicted Fianna Fáil will take two seats with one each for Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. “I’m a bit of a anorak. I love it. I love the whole thing around elections. And as I said, it’s very similar to sport. Only that it is a blood sport, politics, you know, and people do, you know, get a kicking at times and some other times, they’re carried shoulder high but I do think there’s only one seat up for grabs in Clare. I think Fianna Fáil will take two, Fine Gael will take one and for the final seat I think if the vote that went to Sinn Féin the last time, comes back to Sinn Féin, I see Sinn Fein doing very well”.
Flynn outlined, “I find it very hard to see any great coordination between the independents out there, not enough of a coordination to give them the vote”. He said, “You had just over 20,000 for Fine Gael. Rita, who’s in the West, geographically speaking, they don’t have the, what would you say, the critical mass so the last time, I think she got about 4,460 or around that count. I know that it took until the tenth count before Michael McNamara and Violet Anne (Wynne) were elected, And Timmy (Dooley) didn’t make it for some unknown reason so I just think that Fianna Fáil will learn from that, and I do think that they will return two seats. Joe Cooney is going to pull a big vote, they pulled in 3,000 votes in Shannon this time and there’s another 4,000 avaiable in the Killaloe area, that’s 7,000. I know some of them will go in the direction of his colleague, but I do believe that the big and ponderable here is who will take that seat and I’d say quite possibly Joe Cooney could take the Fine Gael seat.
“As for the last remaining seat, I think the tide has gone out on the Greens and I think also a lot of the votes that Roisin Garvey would have got the last time may have had their home in Fianna Fáil with her Fianna Fáil, connections but I do think this time around and I saw it happening in the local election with a colleague of mine, PJ (Ryan). You know, Fianna Fáil have learned their lesson. I think they’ll tighten up on that. I really think that if if what I’m saying holds up, if that was a Sinn Fein vote the last time and it was a large vote, if that goes to Sinn Fein, irrespective. Because at the time, the person that got that huge vote was an unknown. I know Donna, and she was co-opted on the sad passing of Mike McKee, she has done pretty well. She hasn’t ruffled feathers and she takes direction from the party very well and the script she gets from the party works very well and she doesn’t stray too far away from them so I think I think she has a very good chance of taking that fourth seat”.
Eugene pointed out that much of Garvey’s transfer in 2020 went to Joe Carey (FG), he said Eddie Punch (II) “will get a fair shot” of Michael McNamara’s (IND) and Sinn Féin are within “striking distance of a seat” and added, “within striking distance and getting it over the line is is two very different things but may get it without reaching the quota”.
Drennan believed work ethic and time in politics would stand to Dooley and Crowe and they would be joined by Cooney. “I think Joe Cooney, for his work and for his he’s the man with the connectivity throughout the county through the GAA, through his own personal work, as a councillor, through his work ethic as a when he was Mayor of the Council, he’s all over the place”.
Leonora Carey (FG) still has a chance for the final seat “if she gets momentum behind her campaign. She has to show people that she really wants it, that she’s not walking in to just fill the family seat, and with this not a sense of entitlement. It was very tough what happened, Joe. Really, really tough, you can’t be sick in politics and I’m a person that has the height of respect for Joe Carey, because he got me to many a minister and he was great in subcommittees I was on, he was great for Claire, and he was great for the agenda I was on but that doesn’t carry over, you can’t be sick in politics”.
Similarly, he felt Dr Tom Nolan (FG) had a chance given his thirty years as a consultant in Ennis on top of his GP practice in Kilrush. If not a second Fine Gael seat, Drennan predicted Sinn Féin “without reaching the quota” or “very tentative” for Fianna Fáil to win a third seat via Cllr McInerney if the West Clare block of votes comes to fruition.
How it pans out for Fine Gael is “complicated” according to Caimin. “The Carey machine is legendary and never write them off. They have some very skilled people,” he noted but felt the “existing popularity” and size of Cooney’s base will see him win a Fine Gael seat.
When it comes to poll toppers, Flynn predicted Cllr Cooney who he likened to a magnet.
Caimin believed it was between Crowe and Cooney. “We really don’t know what kind of vote Joe will get. We don’t know how he’s going to do in the heart of Ennis, for example. We don’t know how he’s going to do in the housing estates. And equally, we don’t know how he’s going to do in Kilrush, as you say, or Lisdoonvarna or whatever. We know he will do very well in East Clare and that’s important and in South Clare where the population base is but will he do well in the housing estates and among under forties, I’m not so sure”.
