General Election results

Well that was some weekend. Like all good dramas the count had highs and lows and of course a large quantity of alcohol was consumed. Met a lot of people at the count centre that I hadn't seen in ages which was also great.

First the positives of the election

• Kevin Humphreys taking a second seat in Dublin South East. I've spent a lot of time on the doors with Kevin and it is great to see all that hard work pay off. What's even better is that we managed to get two seats on just over 25% of the vote.
  
• The slaughter of Fianna Fáil across the country. After 14 years of mismanagement the electorate finally gave them the kicking they deserve.
  
• Ciara Conway hanging on to Brian O'Shea's seat in Waterford. When Thomas Kyne retired in 1977 it took a few elections to win the seat back. Ciara taking it on the 1st attempt is wonderful.
  
• The electorate of Dublin North West rejecting right wing candidates across the board.
  
• Derek Nolan topping the poll in Galway West. Taking over from Michael D Higgins can never be the easiest task and with Catherine Connolly eating into your support base that job gets harder.
  
• The success of both SF and ULA candidates that shows there is an appetite for strong left wing politics in Ireland.
  

Then the downsides

• Vote management breakdowns in constituencies potentially costing Labour second seats. Cork East, Dublin West and Dún Laoighre I'm looking at you in particular. Bacik and Nulty would have been great additions to the Dáil.
  
• The unstopable FG machine west of the Shannon.
  
• The re-election of a large group of parish pumpers, particularly in Kerry South.
  
• The success of SF and ULA shows that Labour needs to be careful about its left flank as there are now serious threats to it.
  

So where do we go from here? With probably 76 seats, FG are in the driving seat when it comes to forming a government. The obvious partner is Labour and I'm sure that will be the outcome in the end. The alternatives are cobbling together a group of independents or dealing with the devil in the guise of FF.

From the list of elected independents Ross, Lowry, Healy-Rae, and Grealish are the obvious cohort. After that you need to rope some of both McGraths, Wallace and Fleming. I would think it a step to far for O'Sullivan, Pringle, Murphy or Halligan to support an FG led government but then again look at the Gregory deal with Haughey for precedent.

Despite being natural bed-fellows, with only a squabble over some treaty about 90 years ago to differentiate between them, there is a strong argument for a reverse Tallaght strategy where by FF agree to support an FG minority government. However, this is the least likely outcome of this week's horse trading. It would be extremely difficult for Enda Kenny to accept this support after all his statements on a strong, stable government. It would also stop Michael Martin's plans for renewal of FF as he needs to distance the party as much as possible from the cuts and taxes that will be implemented.

Campaign Diary - The Final Day

I love voting, not that it should come as much of a surprise to regular readers. Since I turned 18 I have only missed one vote, when Mary McAleese became President. Other than that I have re-arranged holidays, worked early or late or just strolled up the road to exercise my democratic right.

For the last few votes I have attended the polling station earlier and earlier in the morning. For the locals in 2009 I voted at about 7:20 and for Lisbon 2 I was the second person into the polling station just as they opened up for business. However, today I took it easier and voted coming up to lunch. At the time the presiding officer told me they had a turnout of about 18%. Reports on the evening news suggests that overall turnout will be around 70% which is fantastic.

My ballot paper had 16 names on it. 1 and 2 were easy - Humphreys and Quinn. After a little bit of debate Gormley, despite everything, went down as 3, ULA/PBP's Mooney got 4, SF MacAodhain 5 and then Dylan Haskins at 6. I did contemplate going all the way down just to put Coyle at 16 and a mix of FF/FG at 13-15 but I just couldn't bring myself to separate the rest of the mess. It is unlikely that my ballot will go beyond Kevin Humphreys anyway so I didn't feel too bad.

Tomorrow the count starts and I'll be down in the RDS from early morning tallying and then generally hanging around to see what happens. If you happen to be in the area pop over to the Dublin South East pen and say hello.

Campaign Diary Days 20 and 21 - Final Debate

Last night had the final TV debate between the leaders of the three largest parties. And what a complete snoozefest it turned into. After the opening statements we had yet another rehashing of banking and fiscal policy for the guts of an hour. Now I know the economy is the bedrock of the country but we've heard it all before. Couldn't the topics for the debates have been better organized? Maybe focus on Health and Welfare in one and Foreign Affairs/EU and Education in another?

The only bit of enjoyment I got out of the whole thing was Enda Kenny's comments about Irish Dancing. I watched the debate in the company of a group of political twonks from across the spectrum over a few pints and this had us all in stitches. It immediately brought out a rash of comments about Comely Maidens and other Dev-like utterings.

Unfortunately, my time has become taken up with another matter this week and it's not looking likely that I'm going to get any further diary entries before election day. Thanks to all of you who have made February my most read month ever (by a long stretch). I'll be in the RDS on Saturday hanging out at the Dublin South East pen if you want to stop over and say hello.

Campaign Diary Days 18 and 19 - The Final Push

The weekend, the time of rest, recharge the batteries, mow the lawn, do the shopping. Unless you happen to be involved in the general election campaign. With less than a week to go to polling day Saturday and, to a lesser extent, Sunday were the last days to get a large blitz of postering and leafleting done. Volunteers' time is precious and so co-ordination of this mass mobilization is key. Luckily after Friday night's wash out, the weather held off over the weekend which allowed thousands of leaflets to be dropped right across the constituency.

Support for parties has now pretty much solidified. A few weeks ago many people at the doors were declaring themselves as undecided. Now it is rare to find a person who hasn't picked a side. It is unlikely that many voters will be swayed by the final debate on Tuesday unless some major incident occurs. If Kenny gets outed as a member of the IRA, Gilmore starts singing the old Soviet anthem or Martin actually apologizes for his repeated screwups over the last 14 years then all bets are off but I seriously doubt any of the above will happen.

From here on it it is all about shoring up support. The focus for each candidate will be to make sure the core vote goes to the polling station on Friday. While you might pick up an odd preference here and there in other areas, dropping the ball on home turf will cost you dearly when the boxes are opened on Saturday. At this stage my feet will be glad to move away from Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathgar where every house seems to have 15 granite steps up to the front door.


As an aside here's a photo of a sign I spotted on a door in Dublin South East. The final few words on the long sentence were "get a decent job".

Campaign Diary Day 17 - Vested Interests

The term vested interest has been flung around over the last few days by all parties in the election. From Labour we get attacks on landlords big business as they seem to move to Fine Gael from Fianna Fáil. From the right we get the attacks on the Trade Unions as vested interests hanging around Labour's neck like an albatross. And everyone is attacking RTE about their biased coverage of the election.

What I don't get is why people are so caught up on the term. There is no other type of interest except a vested one. If you don't have skin in the game then you wouldn't give a hoot about the outcome. The Unions are there to represent their members' interests, IBEC is there to represent the views of business owners. Whether or not they have succeeded in this goal over the last few years is neither here nor there. That is their goal and they should not be attacked for doing what they are designed to do.

I had an interesting conversation with a surveyor the other day in Ranelagh. He was very put off by Labour's policy on outlawing upward only rent reviews and claimed that it would be a distortion in the market. Now to my mind the current setup already massively distorts the market. In the commercial world rents are generally a proportion of the cost price of the premises. In a world of falling property prices, the rents have to come down. Otherwise I will just relocate my business to an adjacent building offering lower rents. The alternative is that with all other costs and prices falling, rent will become too much of a burden and I shut up shop.

If the choice has to be made between protecting property owners' investments and protecting viable businesses providing employment to staff and generating tax revenues I certainly know which side I come down on. The removal of upward only rent reviews is the right thing to do.

Of course the gentleman in Ranelagh saw no irony in then attacking various vested interests of public sector workers and unions after blatantly pushing his own vested interest for the previous five minutes. Maybe I should send him an Alannis Morissette CD before polling day.

Campaign Diary Days 15 and 16 - Two more Debates

I have a long standing (16 years at this stage!) commitment on Wednesday evenings and so what is midweek for most is my evening off from the political scene. So it was with some disappointment that I realized I was going to miss the diospóireacht as Gaeilge on TG4 between the three main leaders. By all accounts it was far better than Monday's debate. With the figures showing up to half a million people watched at least part of one of the two broadcasts, it shows that holding a debate in Irish, when all three leaders are able to speak the language, is a good idea.

Last night there was a far more parochial debate held in the Town Hall in Rathmines. Chaired by Aine Lawlor, the event was well attended by both politicians and the public. Due to a meeting in Ringsend about the incinerator, not all candidates were there at the start but by the end only Ruairi Quinn (who had sent apologies) and Chris Andrews were the only representatives of the main parties to not attend.

The format allowed each candidate to give a 5 minute pitch which took about an hour. With so many independents running in Dublin South East this was a great opportunity allow them to differentiate themselves from the rest of the field. Most impressive were Paul Sommerville, Hugh Sheehy and, surprisingly to me, Dylan Haskins. On the other end of the scale I wouldn't have rated James Coyle or Peadar O'Ceallaigh highly on the basis of their performance. Mannix Flynn went off on his usual tirade against the system which having heard it several times before, did nothing for me. Of the party representatives, Annette Mooney did well as did John Gormley despite facing a fairly hostile crowd. Eoghan Murphy talked in endless platitudes and aspirations and won't have won over much from Lucinda Creighton's support base.

The second hour was taken up with questions and statements from the floor with responses from various panel members. The opening twenty minutes or so was taken up with the closure of the cancer care in St Luke's hospital. While obviously an important issue locally, with most of the candidates running on national issues Aine Lawlor had her work cut out moving the debate on to other topics. Once over the first hurdle the questions came thick and fast touching on welfare and disability cuts, the quango cull, Croke Park and political reform.

One man, who I have seen at various meetings before, tried to make a big issue out of immigration but none of the candidates were interested and in fact Sheehy took him on, stating that many of his co-workers, while not Irish, were hard working, tax payers and should be welcomed here. There was also a frank exchange on FG's position on trade unions with Creighton getting in all her talking points on Jack O'Connor and David Begg.

The meeting eventually finished up just after 10:30 by which stage most of the 200 or so in the room were glad to leave and get some fresh air. Overall it was a most enjoyable evening and certainly sorted out the ranking of all the independents in my mind. Well done to the Rathmines Initiative for arranging the event.

Campaign Diary Day 14 - Abortion again

Previously I mentioned how the abortion issue was cropping up on the doorsteps mainly in a negative light. Well last night we were out in the Mount Pleasant area between Rathmines and Ranelagh. I knocked at a door just after the woman who lives there arrived back from work. After announcing who I was canvassing for her first question was "what's your stance on the X case?" and I thought uh-oh. Having given her the official answer I prepared to be berated again but to my surprise she said that she was glad that some party was giving a straight answer on the topic and was willing to drag Ireland into the 21st Century.

From there we had a wide ranging discussion on all sorts of social and equality issues before being joined by the candidate for the traditional handshake. Her parting words were of encouragement and that there were a lot of people for whom our stance on X is important. They may not be as vocal as Cóir and the like, but they are out there, and do appreciate us taking a stand for progressive legislation.