Dr Hillery leaves door open for Seanad bid

DR JOHN Hillery hasn’t ruled out launching a second bid to secure a place in the Upper House.
Questioned by The Clare Champion about a possible Senate bid, Dr Hillery kept his options open and declined to give a definite answer shortly after he bowed out of the 2011 General Election contest.
Suffering from the dramatic collapse of the Fianna Fáil vote in Clare, Dr Hillery’s first preference tally of 6,015 votes, just 774 behind running mate Deputy Timmy Dooley, wasn’t enough to keep him in the race to the end and he was eliminated in the ninth count.
Dr Hillery said he only had one real regret – his lack of time to outline his ideas and policies face-to-face with the electorate the old fashioned way, going from door-to-door.
The decision of the former taoiseach Brian Cowen to call a snap election on February 25 instead of April 11, which was previously anticipated, proved to be a major disadvantage to the Dublin-based consultant psychiatrist.
The Spanish Point native was one of the late entries to the race following the retirement of former defence minister Tony Killeen for health reasons, leaving John Hillery with less than four weeks to mount a political campaign.
The assistance of his cousin, Councillor Michael Hillery, proved valuable for kick-starting his campaign but it wasn’t enough to follow in the footsteps of his late father, Dr Paddy Hillery, who retained a Dáil seat in Clare from 1951 to 1973.
Dr Hillery has said the grassroots members of Fianna Fáil have been ignored by the outgoing government.
“People feel separated and isolated from the Fianna Fáil party. Fianna Fáil needs to get back to its roots. It became a Dublin centred party for making decisions from the top down and we need to change that,” he said.
Asked if he was upset by comments about his Clare roots and time spent in the county, Dr Hillery replied, “I really enjoyed the whole month, I enjoyed canvassing in cold and wet day meeting some wonderful people throughout Clare. We have enough talented people in Clare to get the county and the country moving again with the right opportunities. We don’t need outside help or having Dublin telling us what we have to do.
“Ireland got caught up in a kind of hysteria when some people got out of touch with reality. A group of people were at a party, but this didn’t apply to the whole country,” he said.