DUBLIN NORTH-EAST | LARRY O’TOOLE

So near and yet so far

Larry O’Toole congratulates Dublin City Council colleague Dessie Ellis TD

BY MÍCHEÁL
Mac DONNCHA

DESPITE our best efforts, elections are not scientific exercises and cannot be reduced to a formula. They are things of emotion, passion, dejection, elation. Ironically, it is at the most scientific stage of elections – the number-crunching in the count centre – that these emotions are seen most clearly.
They were there in Dublin’s RDS last weekend where the votes for the Dublin city constituencies were counted. In the past I have not been in the best condition arriving at the count centre at 8.30am to begin tallying because there were usually a few pints in the constituency after we had spent polling day getting the vote out. This time, however, sense prevailed and we arrived with clear heads.
I have been working with Larry O’Toole in elections since 1984. This was his fifth time running for the Dáil in Dublin North-East. Would we finally get him elected? We fought a great campaign, the returns from the canvass were excellent. He was tipped in some newspapers. We knew it was within our grasp but could we take it this time? Analysis takes you to that point then emotion takes over. You start to look for lucky signs and symbols – the black cat crossing the Tonlegee Road, the pair of swans flying over us in New Grove estate. People ask each other the impossible question: “What do you think?”
In the count centre those who have campaigned in opposition to one another have to work side by side. Usually it is cordial but sometimes it is difficult to be restrained. This was the case last Saturday when Averil Power, the Fianna Fáil candidate in Dublin North-East, came into the RDS. On the eve of polling day she had an anti-Sinn Féin/anti-Larry O’Toole leaflet distributed in the more middle-class areas of the constituency calling on people to vote for her to keep Sinn Féin out. Fianna Fáil was not mentioned except for the tiny party logo in the corner. We were accused of opposing measures to tackle crime. Averil Power is Mícheál Martin’s spokesperson on political reform. Presumably this is the ‘new way of doing politics’ they are always talking about.
What a contrast to real republicans, people who have worked night and day for a new Ireland, at great personal cost.
The most emotional moment for me was the election of Dessie Ellis. His mother and sister were there as he was elected to roof-lifting republican cheers. Larry and I recalled his family protesting outside the perimeter fence of Roger Casement Aerodrome at Baldonnell as Dessie was extradited to England on an RAF plane while on hunger strike in 1990. This was the act of a Fianna Fáil government led by Charlie Haughey. But last weekend Sinn Féin trounced Fianna Fáil in Dublin.
Dessie’s election was bitter-sweet when we realised that Larry was not going to make it. The long day and night ended with the second Labour candidate in the difficult Dublin North-East three-seater getting ahead of Larry and taking the seat. But our heads were not down. Larry’s parting, stirring words of encouragement in the count centre lifted us once again. Larry was always a winner and always will be.