Reilly increases vote

BY Justin Moran

Joe Reilly's performance put him in with a great chance of joining the party's team of TDs in the next general election

While admitting there was no doubt that the Sinn Féin vote had increased, Labour leader Pat Rabbitte bemoaned, "I don't know what that says about us as a people".

What it says is that an increasing number of the Irish people are reading newspapers and watching television and asking themselves whose agenda the incessant attacks on Sinn Féin is suiting.

But it is the arrogance of the musings of the Labour Prince that is most telling. Clearly, Pat feels that Sinn Féin voters are people who have something wrong with them, are people of dubious character and suspicious moral background, despite the fact that one in five voters in his constituency gave Seán Crowe their first preference.

The failure of Rabbitte to understand the growth in the republican vote in Ireland is emblematic of the greater failure of the legion of political and election analysts who have yet to get their heads around it. The people simply do not see the Fine Gael/Labour pact as credible, honest or coherent. It is a coalition of the confused and the power-hungry, united only by their thirst for ministerial Mercedes.

It is not the kind of option to excite people to the polls, and attempts to translate the results last weekend onto the next general election are doomed to failure.

The reality is that by-elections are notoriously irrelevant to state polls. As Fianna Fáil have been keen to point out, they lost an average of 11% of the vote in each and every by-election in the last Dáil term and yet still came within a whisker of an overall majority come the general election.

In Kildare North, the refusal of Fianna Fáil activists in the McCreevy camp to canvass, or even vote, crippled Áine Brady, whose vote slumped almost 20 points.

In Meath, there are indications that Fianna Fáil activists in Trim and Dunshaughlin also sat on their hands, a statistic no doubt linked to the reluctance of sitting TDs Dempsey and Wallace, whose power bases would be in those areas, to get their vote out for a constituency rival.

From the point of view of Dempsey and Wallace, having four sitting Fianna Fáil TDs makes for a crowded field next time out; far better to put career before party and hamstring Shane Cassells.

In Kildare North, the McCreevy family clearly felt that Junior's time has not yet come and it will be easier for him without a sitting party TD. There is, therefore, a case to be made that in both constituencies, the Fianna Fáil campaign was not running at full speed, as it can be expected to do come the general election. Certainly in Meath, until the last week of the campaign, it was clearly stumbling along.

For practical purposes, while Fianna Fáil has lost a seat, it was not the so-called alternative government of Fine Gael and Labour that took it, but an independent, left-wing candidate in former Workers' Party councillor Catherine Murphy. Fine Gael's victory in Meath, while admittedly highly creditable and on the back of a well-run and funded campaign, merely maintained the status quo.

Murphy's victory in Kildare North underlines a key theme that has been running since the summer elections, that voters eager to reject the government do not see in Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte the nucleus of an alternative government. Indeed, when Phil Hogan referred to Enda Kenny as "clearly emerging as a real alternative Taoiseach" on A Week in Politics, Noel Dempsey was not the only person to guffaw out loud.

This is the explanation for the voters turning to Sinn Féin and the Greens in 2002, rejecting the Nice Treaty, electing dozens of Sinn Féin councillors and an MEP last summer.

The growth in Sinn Féin's vote in Meath has been an issue that has put some of Ireland's best political commentators to their mettle in trying to explain it away. They miss the simple point argued by Joe Reilly, that for decades Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have divided the constituency between them and they are both responsible for the massive infrastructural deficit. As Joe repeatedly pointed out, "we don't need another silent suit in Leinster House".

Some analysts have decided to ignore the Sinn Féin result and focus on the by-election winners. Others have argued that the Sinn Féin vote did not increase, but that the party simply achieved a miraculous 100% turnout of its vote, when overall turnout had plummeted 17%. Clearly, the pundits putting forward this argument expect us to believe that while the Sinn Féin machine was getting out the vote, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had taken the day off.

In fairness, these are the same political commentators who argue that the establishment parties 'gave' Sinn Féin a clear run in the elections to support the Peace Process.

The reality is that Sinn Féin's support is primarily based in working class areas, a section of society with a notoriously low turnout and worst affected by the traditional drop in by-election support.

So what actually happened in Meath?

Sinn Féin's vote, far from the collapse predicted in wild hope by some of the more enthusiastic media pundits, held steady and increased by three points to over 12%.

In the teeth of the most sustained media and political assault on a political party since the cessation of 1994, and in a by-election campaign that the media instantly shaped as a two-horse race between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in order to cut Sinn Féin out, the party's activists delivered.

Labour have reason to be happy with a substantial increase in their vote and placing Dominic Hannigan as a real contender for Meath East next time round. But come the next general election he will have independent councillor and former Labour TD Brian Fitzgerald to contend with in the south-east of the constituency and he is unlikely to be able to hold his vote.

Joe Reilly, on the other hand, must be seen as in with a real chance in the new Meath West constituency. The party's share of the vote in the strongholds of Navan and Kells increased and while Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are certain of a seat each in the new three-seater, Joe is leading the race for the final seat on last Saturday's numbers.

Sinn Féin's success last week in Meath was not in taking a seat, always an extremely unlikely prospect in a by-election, but in facing down our opponents and setting the party up for electing Joe Reilly as the first Sinn Féin TD for Meath since Liam Mellowes come the next election.