“IT WAS OF their own making.”
That is how one person put it at the RDS count centre when discussing the failure of Fine Gael to keep a seat in Dublin Bay South.
The party is traditionally strong in the constituency (created in 2013) and before Thursday, could have expected that after over a decade in government, it had a good shot of holding onto its seat.
The territory (previously Dublin South-East) was formerly the base of the party’s revered leader Garret FitzGerald and has been dubbed as “Ireland’s most affluent constituency”.
Although Fine Gael had no TD there as recently as 2002, James Geoghegan failing to secure former minister Eoghan Murphy’s seat represents a big blow to Fine Gael.
It now has no representative in the constituency having had two less than 18 months ago.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar said he didn’t believe yesterday’s result reflected on his leadership.
There have been “good elections and bad elections under my leadership”, he said.
“It’s very hard in a by-election for a government to win… because people know that the by-election doesn’t change the government,” he said.
After Murphy resigned his Dáil seat at the end of April, many assumed that former TD Kate O’Connell would be the obvious choice to carry the party’s banner in the subsequent ballot.
However, her candidacy was ruled out early with Geoghegan hoovering up the nominations of all 12 branches of the constituency and effectively locking O’Connell out of the race.
In the General Election last year, Murphy and O’Connell had plenty of votes combined to take a seat on the first count if there was just one candidate, with O’Connell only missing out on a seat by a few hundred votes.
Fine Gael’s in-house woes would ultimately blind the party from taking the seat.
With some elements of the organisation in Dublin Bay South seemingly have a problem with O’Connell and bridges burned with Leo Varadkar, O’Connell was ignored as a possible candidate, despite a well-known name and a solid reputation on issues the party want to be recognised for – namely marriage equality and Repeal.
When asked about O’Connell at the count centre, Varadkar said “a lot has been said about it” but “a lot of it not being factual”. He described how Fine Gael is a democratic party, noting that she did not seek a nomination.
Meanwhile, some Fine Gael members were blaming an early opinion poll for the final result yesterday. The Irish Times published its polling by Ipsos/MRBI last month, and it showed that while Geoghegan was leading the field, ultimately Bacik could be the likely winner when transfers were taken into account.
Despite that analysis and the housing question, some in Fine Gael believe the poll gave the impression they were “home and hosed”.
Every candidate that knocked on doors for this by-election said the number one issue was housing.
Housing “eclipsed” everything, one senior Fine Gael source told The Journal. They said they heard from a lot of renters who are unable to buy anywhere in Dublin, as well as from parents who are worried their kids won’t be able to afford a home in the capital.
On the morning after the loss, and despite his protestations, questions are certain to be asked of Varadkar’s leadership.
However, those members who The Journal spoke to at the RDS yesterday said there is no real trouble headed his way. They simply acknowledged that a cold, hard look at the campaign would be required.
Others were trying to keep positive saying the result wasn’t the end of the world.
Ian Richardson, a data scientist and tally expert who mapped tallies across the 2020 general election, previously questioned whether there was a “mismatch between the message and the messenger” in the form of James Geoghegan, who sought to place cycling and housing at the core of this electoral pitch for Fine Gael.
That theory seems to have aged well with Fine Gael falling just short of matching its first-preference support from the 2020 election (Murphy and O’Connell received 27.7% compared with Geoghegan’s 26.2%).
That lack of growth is what Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald honed in on. She told reporters yesterday that the government was ‘clearly failing when it came to housing’, and that is what is playing out with the vote.
She said the government had been given a “very strong message”, stating that it been “found out” on housing.
Whatever message the electorate was sending the government’s way, the decision by Fine Gael to not back O’Connell largely sealed their fate.
Many within the party admit that was a fatal error, and is something they will no doubt reflect upon given yesterday’s result.
Fianna Fáil couldn’t capitalise
Weeks ago, Fine Gael turning its back on O’Connell was music to Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan’s ears.
He could hardly contain his delight on the airwaves when speaking to RTÉ’s Claire Byrne on her radio programme.
While complementing O’Connell – and stating that on a personal level he was disappointed she would not be running – he said Fine Gael had done his party’s candidate a great favour by not putting the former TD forward for election.
O’Callaghan said he was “‘very pleased” his party wouldn’t be facing such a popular and competitive candidate in the by-election.
Traditionally, Dublin Bay South has been a very weak constituency for Fianna Fáil so realistically the party was just looking for a credible performance at the polls.
Looking back at General Election 2020, Fianna Fáil only achieved 13.8% of the first preference votes, fourth behind Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Féin.
O’Callaghan’s aim was to keep up that percentage, but the dismal result could spell trouble.
Other than what does this mean for Fine Gael, the other big question after this by-election is: What the hell happened with Fianna Fáil?
Deirdre Conroy limped over the line with less than 5% of the first-preference vote. By anyone’s expectations, that is, to put it plainly, very bad.
The final result for the party seems likely to place a question mark over O’Callaghan and the campaign he ran, not to mention candidate selection.
O’Callaghan, considered one of the leading contenders to succeed Taoiseach Micheál Martin as Fianna Fáil leader in the years to come, was the director of elections for the by-election.
Add in that Dublin Bay South is his own constituency, he had a lot riding on this vote.
While privately, many in the party acknowledged in the early days of the campaign that Conroy was unlikely to feature, there was still pressure on O’Callaghan to deliver a decent Fianna Fáil performance. At least something they could take back to base, without having to hang their heads low. This result then is far from ideal.
And the Greens? This constituency is also Eamon Ryan’s homeland. So coming away with just 7% of the vote is a bad day at the office for the leader.
Turning to Sinn Féin, the party also wasn’t realistically contemplating a win, but as the campaign went on, the reaction on the doors appeared to be positive.
Dublin Bay South is a mixed bag, and Mary Lou McDonald has said it is an area she’d like to grow the party’s vote in.
This race will be a good litmus test for Sinn Féin in terms of where the public mood is with government parties, if nothing else.
For Labour, after a “difficult” few years electorally, as leader Alan Kelly put it, yesterday was a good day for the party.
Labour candidate Ivana Bacik, who topped the poll, is well-known name in the area, with a long-standing political career in Leinster House. Now the senator is to become a TD.
As performances go, topping the poll as a member of a party that is only polling at 3% is not a bad innings.
Early in the campaign, Fine Gael senior ministers were saying this election was a war between Sinn Féin and Fine Gael.
Kelly said this vote has shown that is very much not the case.
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