Browne re-elected on eleventh count
DEPUTY James Browne has retained his seat in Dáil Éireann during this year’s General Election having been elected yesterday at the 11th count.
In an election that saw sweeping voter change across the country with Sinn Féin’s popularity soaring amid a kickback against Fine Gael and his own Fianna Fáil party, Deputy Browne’s re-election could justifiably be regarded as a major victory.
Speaking to this newspaper he said he was happy with his own performance having secured 8,058 first preference votes, however, he conceded that Fianna Fáil running four candidates in a five-seater constituency was a strategy unlikely to succeed.
‘I knew I wasn’t going to top the poll or anything like it but I was confident of retaining the seat,’ he said.
‘There was a lot of that going around, that I was safe and all that, but I knew it was going to be a fight,’ he added
‘That was never going to happen with four candidates and it was never going to happen with a Sinn Féin candidate and a Fine Gael minister in the town [of Enniscorthy].’
Deputy Browne went on to comment: ‘The maths for that never added up because even we had a brilliant day and we had received 32 per cent of the vote, which is what some were hoping for in Fianna Fáil, that would still only have given me about 2,200 votes and you then divide that by four, even if one candidate was ahead of the other there was no way that anyone in Fianna Fáil was going to get above 10,000 max.’
Deputy Browne said he didn’t give ‘any credibility to that’ [pre-election speculation].
Over-enthusiastic optimism from within the party was something he had to fight during his campaign.
‘It was one of the hardest things I had to fight back against throughout the campaign,’ he said.
‘This notion that I was safe or I was going to top the poll; it was never going to happen.’
‘It was just mathematically impossible for what candidates we had and with two sitting TDs in Enniscorthy and then Johnny Mythen - and that was before Johnny Mythen got his surge and once that happened it was never going to happen [for me].’
With regard to the kick back nationally, and in county Wexford, against Fianna Fail with regard to how the electorate feel both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have let them down Deputy Browne said the ‘perception’ that his party was in Government went against them.
‘I think the problem wasn’t so much that they think Fianna Fáil let them down but they were finding it difficult to differentiate Fianna Fáil from the
Government, being in a confidence and supply arrangement for four years,’ he said.
‘That was a real difficulty and I would also argue that Sinn Féin offered an awful lot of easy solutions that are going to be very hard to deliver,’ he added.
However, he agreed that people are very angry and disillusioned at the moment and that’s what contributed to the seismic shift in the Irish political landscape.
‘People are very frustrated and angry at the moment,’ he said. ‘I met a lot of people on the doors who were saying they are not getting a break at all; their child couldn’t get a health appointment or their grandmother couldn’t get a health appointment,’ he added.
Deputy Browne also said issues like large college fees, huge rents lack of access to broadband.
‘It’s everything across the way,’ he said.
‘The cost of living is high and they just felt they were not getting a break anywhere,’ he added.
‘I think because Fianna Fáil has stayed in and kept the Government there for so long they just wanted something totally different.’
While the position that Fianna Fáil party leader Deputy Micheal Martin was at pains in the run up to the election to say his party would not go into Government with Sinn Féin there appeared to be a slight softening of that view by the Fianna Fail party leader as the election progressed and it became clear that Sinn Féin were going to receive a massive amount of support.
However, while Deputy Browne disagreed there was a ‘mood change’ he did say ‘we are in a very unprecedented situation that no-one thought we would be in’.
‘We are going to have to digest this and people are going to have to consider the situation where we now have three parties who are all within probably three, four or five seats of each other,’ he said.
‘Nobody with any hope of going off and forming a coalition [can do so] without one of the other two,’ he added.
‘It will take a lot of time to digest this new situation.’
When asked if he would be happy to see Fianna Fail going into Government with Sinn Féin, he replied: ‘Well at this stage, wherever the last few seats go across the country will have a dramatic impact on the situation so from my perspective I don’t think today is the time to think about it.’
‘However, whatever happens we do need a stable Government,’ he said.
‘There is no benefit to this country to going out for another General Election in two or three months and there is no benefit in having some sort cobbled together arrangement which is going to collapse in eight or 12 months and have no power to make any decisions,’ he added.
‘Whatever is going to come out of this we do need a stable
Government for four or five years, especially in the case of Brexit as well.’
When asked about what his specific key priorities will be for county Wexford during his next term in the Dail, Deputy Kehoe said the ‘Wexford is a county with huge opportunity’.
‘It’s only down the road from Dublin but that potential is not being met and the reason for that is that, to me, is that we don’t have a university,’ he said.
‘You will not get a big American company coming in and setting up to bring loads of jobs to the south east because they want a university attached where they can train up their employees when they need to do so,’ he added.
He also said Rosslare Europort has not been exploited to its maximum potential.
‘Rosslare Europort has massive potential for Wexford and the entire south east,’ he said.
‘We have the highest unemployment rate of any region but even those employed are in very low paid jobs,’ he added.
‘There’s no spare money in anybody’s family now and that’s the difficulty.’
He went on to comment: ‘I think if Rosslare is taken back from the British, and we put in a stand-alone port company, I think if you do to the two of those and nothing else that alone would unleash huge potential.
He also said Wexford has massive tourist potential and said it’s an industry that also creates jobs.