Why is Sean so desperate to live in the white house?

HE HAD an open goal. He had beaten the keeper and there was nothing between him and the back of the net. The game was in its dying seconds, all he had to do was put this one across the line and the biggest trophy of them all was in the bag. And then, he fell.

He saw defeat snatched from the very jaws of victory. And, for the past seven years, he’s had to sit and watch the eventual winner – who was so close to being an also-ran – parade around with the prize that should have been his…

How sick must Sean Gallagher have felt, all of these years, at the thought of how close he came to the Presidency? How stomach-churning must it have been, week in and week out, to watch Michael D revel in the role that once seemed within his grasp? We all know what it’s like to see a rival get the job/ house/lover/promotion we’d earmarked for ourselves and, worse still, make a real success of it too.

Most of us, though, can shrug it off; but then, most of us don’t have our noses rubbed in it on a regular basis. How hard must it have been for Sean Gallagher to watch President Higgins greeting the Queen, or hobnobbing with the Pope, or boarding the Government jet for yet another overseas trip, or to hear Hollywood superstar Liam Neeson admit he’d been ‘weak-kneed’ with nerves at the honour of meeting such an icon, and thinking that it could have been him?

Pretty hard, seems to be the answer, because Sean Gallagher hasn’t been able to shrug it off and instead wants another shot at the gig. He’ll be seeking a nomination to contest the election in October (but won’t be sharing his vision for the office with the electorate until he’s good and ready). Unlike the other candidates, including two other Dragons’ Den stars, Gavin Duffy and Peter Casey, he has thus far opted to avoid the media and its questions. He seems fairly convinced that it’s just a formality – which is ironic given that one of the main criticisms of Michael D is his sense of entitlement…

One thing Sean Gallagher doesn’t need to spell out, though, is a very robust sense of self-belief. He clearly expects that the voters will have as big a welcome for him as he has for himself, and will forget the reasons they abandoned him in their droves last time out. He took ‘substantial damages’ from RTÉ – and indirectly from every licence-payer – over the ‘fake tweet’ that he seems to think scuppered his campaign in 2011, but in reality it was the admission that the fake tweet prompted, and not what it contained, that did the damage – following, as it did, a series of not-very-convincingly-answered questions about his political and business hinterland.

Gallagher conceded, live on air, that he ‘may have’ collected an ‘envelope’ containing a €5,000 donation on behalf of Fianna Fáil, following a fundraiser featuring Brian Cowen. The association of Fianna Fáil plus envelopes plus large sums of cash, with a candidate who had promised to be a breath of fresh air, was enough to confirm the sense sweeping the country that he was not actually the man for the job.

SO HE must really want the Presidency very, very badly to step back into the ring when he’s already taken such a battering. He’s never offered himself for election to the Oireachtas – where they actually make policy – so why the Presidency? And even if those seven galling years of watching Michael D do ‘his’ job might just possibly explain Sean Gallagher’s candidacy, what about the others?

Since they can all afford a big house, a posh car and the odd foreign trip, it’s intriguing to speculate on what, exactly, has induced the three wealthy Dragons to leap into the bearpit of a Presidential campaign? Peter Casey is so rich that he says he won’t take a salary at all, Gavin Duffy reckons he’ll be worth every penny, and Gallagher has yet to reveal his plans for the massive salary and expenses that go with the job.

So far, the candidates have made similarly fatuous declarations of their ambitions for a job that has zero meaningful powers, though that’s not to say it’s a role without power – specifically, the power to make a name for yourself on the international scene.

Mary Robinson left early to take up a big job with the UN, and Mary McAleese, who served two terms, made Forbes’s list of the world’s most powerful women. To paraphrase Mrs Merton’s question to Debbie McGee, just what is it that attracts these ambitious businessmen to a job with a global profile and boundless networking opportunities? Hard to know...