Who’ll get the Royal vote?

I CAN’T even pretend to have any idea who will win the Meath East Byelection to be held before the end of the month. The best I can say is that any one of four different outcomes is possible. And that’s saying nothing. 
The seat, as you know, became vacant with the tragic death before Christmas of junior minister Shane McEntee. The Fine Gael candidate is Helen McEntee, Shane’s 26-year-old daughter. She is expected to get a huge sympathy vote and is tipped in some quarters, even outside her own party, to retain the seat for Fine Gael. The Fianna Fáil candidate is Senator Thomas Byrne, a former TD who lost his seat here in the Fianna Fáil massacre at the last election. Byrne is an excellent candidate and is almost certain to be put on the front bench of the party by Micheál Martin if he wins the seat. Meath East, unlike Meath West, is not strong Sinn Féin territory but that may well be in the process of changing and the Sinn Féin candidate, Darren O’Rourke, is in there with a reasonable chance of success. Then there is the possibility of an Independent candidate being in the shake-up.
So that’s as far as I am prepared to go at this stage. I think the seat will be won either by Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil or perhaps by Sinn Féin with the possibility of an Independent candidate taking the honours. Even though Labour won a seat at the last General Election with the party candidate Dominic Hannigan heading the poll, I don’t believe Lablour will be among the top three this time.
Although it is only just over two years since the general election in February 2011, the world of politics in Ireland has changed utterly since then. Fine Gael and Labour took the three seats with over 60% of the vote between them, leaving Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin out in the cold. Actually the Fianna Fáil vote was down a staggering 24 percentage points on the 2007 general election and the party lost the two seats it held in this three-seat constituency.
You could say it doesn’t matter a damn who wins this election. If Fine Gael win, it just means the party retains the late Shane McEntee’s seat with the election of his daughter. If Fianna Fáil win, it means the party is back to having 20 seats in the Dáil, the amount it won at the 2011 election but lost with the death of Brian Lenihan and the subsequent loss of the late Mr Lenihan’s seat in Dublin West. If Sinn Féin wins the seat, you could say this win will mark another step forward in the Republic for this party. If an Independent candidate takes the seat, the result will be looked on as another protest vote against the established parties and their policies.
No matter what the result, nothing will change. The Government will continue to govern as they have enough of a majority to shelter themselves against all kinds of electoral defeat over the next three years or so.
However, that’s not the way the political parties will look at it. They will consider it of vital importance to take the seat and they will spare no expense in trying to pull off a win. For Fine Gael to win in the face of continuing austerity and the looming prospect of the hated property tax, the party will view this as a resounding vote of confidence in the policies adopted by the Government to get us out of the economic mess we are in. On that score I was mildly interested in a vox pop conducted by RTÉ at the weekend and broadcast on Mary Wilson’s Drivetime programme on Monday evening this week. I was driving in a tricky situation myself at the time and could not devote my full attention to the programme. But what I gathered was that out of six or seven people interviewed by RTÉ, I think only one person spoke out against Fine Gael. All the others thought the Government was doing its best in tough times. Vox pops are notoriously unscientific in trying to gauge public opinion on any matter but this one made me think. Perhaps the people are still blaming Fianna Fáil for almost bankrupting the country and are absolving Fine Gael from any culpability in the matter. However, all the opinion polls, especially since the budget in December, are showing that the Government is extremely unpopular and a majority of the people want them out of office. Perhaps that’s not the way it is in East Meath. Perhaps when it comes to it, the people want the Government to get on with the job and get us out of the hole we are in as quickly as possible.
While the result in Meath East might not be vital, it will certainly be very interesting.