*Cillian Murphy (FF) speaking on Scariff Bay Community Radio. Photograph: Joe Buckley
TÁNAISTE, Micheál Martin (FF) has said Fianna Fáil got their strategy wrong in West Clare for the local elections after the incumbent Cillian Murphy (FF) lost his seat.
Overall Fianna Fáil gained a seat on Clare County Council with the election of fourteen councillors, two of which Cllr Rachel Hartigan (FF) and Cllr David Griffin (FF) are the youngest on the local authority while the party has its highest ever contingent of female councillors in Clare with the figure rising to four.
In the Kilrush LEA, the decision to run four candidates, Cllr Rita McInerney (FF), Cllr Michael Shannon (FF), Alan Troy (FF) and Cillian Murphy (FF) was a blunder according to party strategists within the county. The decision to have a ticket of four in West Clare came via a directive from headquarters.
Regarded as one of the top performing councillors during the term from 2019 to 2024, the loss of Murphy was a big blow to the party.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, the party leader Micheál Martin (FF) commented, “I was very disappointed at losing Cillian Murphy, I dealt with him and Deputy Christopher O’Sullivan on coastal matters, nature restoration and ecological issues, it is an awful pity. I didn’t get into the specifics of every local electoral area, there is a constituency committee that examined it, they got some right and they got some wrong but we will evaluate that, it is one that got away and we should not have lost that seat”.
This view was shared by outgoing Chairman of the party’s branch in Clare, Mike Enright when speaking at their AGM this week. He said he told headquarters that they were “totally opposed” to running four candidates in West Clare. “It was a bad decision and we paid a heavy price for it”.
Countywide, the Tánaiste pointed out that it was a strong election result for the party. “It was a very strong performance and I pay tribute to the party organisation here for the efforts they put in and particularly for facilitating young councillors like Rachel and David in Shannon as two examples and other new councillors. 39 percent of the vote is very strong, 50 percent of the seats so it is evidence of a very strong platform for Fianna Fáil in Clare, we’ve good hard working councillors, whilst local and European elections are not General Elections and you cannot compare the two but nonetheless I think there is a base for us to be competitive in the next General Election.
“We will be targeting a second seat here, in Cathal Crowe we have a very strong hard-working TD, in Timmy Dooley we have a very experienced former TD who has worked very hard as a Senator, we may run a third candidate and we will examine all of that”.
He continued, “We were generally pleased with the locals and also the Europeans because we gained an extra seat in Ireland South with Cynthia Ní Mhurchú who was a force of nature during the campaign and I think she caught a lot of people by surprise but I knew in the last week she was going to do well when I did a weekend tour of the constituency with her because it was evident her campaign was getting a positive reception from voters, she got a very strong Munster vote and base in Cork, Billy Kelleher did fantastic work in the last five years which was to be seen”.
Presently there is no date agreed for a General Election, he confirmed and responded, “We’re going full-term”. The decision to bring forward the Budget to October 1st suggests an election is edging closer but Martin did not disagree. “It’s not really moving forward, it’s a week earlier and it makes sense. The Budget will take a lot of preparation, it is important work, then you have the Finance Bill and the Social Protection Bill so the Government in my view will go full term”.
Public support for Sinn Féin has fallen to its lowest point since early 2020, the latest opinion poll from the Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks revealed on Sunday. The survey suggests Sinn Féin has now fallen behind Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, making it the third most popular party among voters. Fine Gael is the most popular party in the country with 24%, up two points on the previous poll, while support for Fianna Fáil has jumped three points since last month, making it the second most popular party at 20% and Sinn Féin dropped to 18%. Support for Independents and others has fallen by three points, support for the group sits at 20%.
This stalling in Sinn Féin momentum has been visible in recent months with the party failing to make serious inroads in the recent local or European elections across the country. “I think the more important thing is to focus on the policy and Sinn Féin contradict themselves time and time again, they have not produced any blueprint on housing, nobody has any idea on how Sinn Féin would deal with the housing issues differently, we know they would get rid of the Help to Buy scheme and get rid of the First Home Scheme, both schemes are helpful to first-time buyers and a lot of people would not be happy if both schemes were to go and that is Sinn Féin’s policy to get rid of them. Fianna Fáil have introduced some schemes that are going very well, we have to build more houses and we will 38,000 this year which is way above the target, last year we did 33,000 which was ahead of the Housing for All target, we know there is an issue with housing and we have to build more housing, there is a problem with Cost of Living and we’re focusing on that because we understand people are under pressure, health is a big issue, we spent enormous sums of money in the last four years, overriding all of that the population has grown and it has grown by a million in the last twenty plus years so that has its own impact on services, we need a strong economy to sustain those services. I’ve been speaking here at Ennis Chamber’s Presidents Lunch to people who are job creators, we need to maintain a strong pro-enterprise economic policy that creates opportunities for people to set up their business and create jobs”.
