ELECTED for another five years late this evening, Fine Gael’s Gabriel Keating said his vote climbed during the day like a jumbo jet.
He said he was always confident. “I had the work done and I felt it would come right. My vote this morning was low, it was two or three hundred behind some of the lads that I thought would get there, but it climbed and climbed and climbed.”
It was a very different campaign to 2009, he claimed. “It was a different campaign because five years ago I was really taking the seat that had been held by Madeline Taylor Quinn. This time we had two candidates, an ex Fine Gael and a Fine Gael candidate from Kilrush. But I had great support, great canvassers with me.
“As the day went on I was climbing, it (his vote) was like a 747 going up all the time,” he added.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.