Questions raised over FG’s strategy

BY the standards of all previous general elections since the party’s foundation, Fine Gael’s performance in Clare was outstanding.
It won 42.3% of the vote, more than at any of the previous ballots. It also managed to retain its two seats with a degree of ease, while poll topper Pat Breen won more first preferences than any previous Fine Gael general election candidate in Clare.
All things considered there was an awful lot for the party to be happy about but after it became apparent that Tony Mulcahy would not be joining Joe Carey and Pat Breen in the Dáil, there was some criticism of the party’s three-candidate strategy.
Some felt that if four candidates had been on the ticket, as was the case in the 2007 general election, the party could have really rattled a third seat. Others felt that while a fourth candidate might have helped the vote, there wasn’t a real chance of taking a third.
North Clare county councillor Martin Conway had made no secret of his desire to run and at the count his constituency and party colleague, Joe Arkins, said he should have been on the ticket.
“Now isn’t the time to be having this conversation but it would have been appropriate, following the withdrawal of Tony Killeen from national politics, that the slot in North Clare would have been filled.
“Fianna Fáil were not in a position to fill it, the nearest they could get was a Miltown candidate. There was an obvious opening there for us. I think we should have had a candidate in North Clare, I think Martin Conway was an obvious candidate having polled very well in the local election and having declared his intention at convention. The difference is that having four candidates in the field we would have had an opportunity to canvass more forensically than we did.”
He said he didn’t know if it would have resulted in Fine Gael taking another seat but he believed it would have helped.
“Our percentage would have wanted to be around 51% or 52% and even then you’d only have a chance at the third seat, depending on how the two higher ones fell. For the last one we would have been looking to fill the seat without reaching the quota.”
Councillor Oliver Garry also felt that a four-candidate strategy would have been wiser. “I think that if we’d spread four candidates around the county we’d probably have done better,” he said.
He felt the local organisation should have had more control over strategy and like Councillor Arkins he felt Martin Conway should have been let run.
“Martin put his name forward for the convention but didn’t make it. It’s a pity, if we were left to control our own destiny down here we would probably have done a better selection,” he said.
In the weeks before the election there was also talk of East Clare councillor Joe Cooney being added to the ticket, but by the time he decided he would go forward the three candidate strategy was in place, with Tony Mulcahy joining the two sitting TDs.
Speaking this week, Councillor Cooney said he didn’t know how well his inclusion would have worked.
“It’s hard to know. There were already three candidates in this area, Michael McNamara, Timmy Dooley and Tony Mulcahy and Joe Carey wasn’t too far away. We probably had an outside chance of the third seat with four candidates but it would have been very hard. Also if myself or Martin Conway had went it would have affected Joe Carey or Pat Breen.”
It is widely assumed that Councillor Cooney would have eaten into the Carey vote, while Mr Conway would have taken from Pat Breen’s vote.
Shannon Town Councillor Sean McLoughlin was active in Tony Mulcahy’s campaign and he felt that to get the party’s third candidate over the line, the party would have needed another name on the ballot.
“It was a big ask this time, but maybe if we had a fourth candidate in there we might have had someone coming up to give transfers. We won two seats with four candidates the last time and I felt we should have had four candidates coming into this election. You need to get transfers and to get the three seats we should have had four candidates. But that’s history, it’s gone and we have to look to the future.”
Sean Chambers, who has served as the party’s constituency secretary felt the election was fantastic for Fine Gael.
“It has been a long journey but a fantastic journey. We’re here today getting two seats and we’re talking about the ‘if-nots’ and ‘what-nots’ of maybe getting a third seat. It’s a long way from nine years ago when we had one seat.”
This is the third general election in a row that Fine Gael has increased its percentage of the vote in Clare. With the party floundering under the leadership of Michael Noonan it slipped to 25.46% in 2002 and won just a single seat. Five years later it increased its share to slightly over 35% and won back its second seat. The party has also been buoyed by its performaces in the last two local elections and it now has 12 seats to Fianna Fáil’s 11 on Clare County Council.