Lisa dismayed over ‘being squeezed out’ of MEP race
Chambers complains amid fury over FF’s ‘male, pale and stale’ ticket
SENATOR Lisa Chambers has complained that party colleagues Barry Cowen and Niall Blaney squeezed her out of the race for the European elections, according to Fianna Fáil sources.
Barry Cowen won the nomination to stand for Fianna Fáil in the Midlands North-West constituency this week, beating senators Niall Blaney and Ms Chambers.
It had been expected either Mr Cowen or Ms Chambers would win the nomination, with the party then being able to add one or the other to the ticket.
But Mr Blaney performed very strongly, winning 803 votes on the first round compared to Mr Cowen’s 894 votes, while Ms Chambers trailed with 570 votes.
Mr Blaney is part of a storied Fianna Fáil family. His uncle Neil Blaney, a former minister in successive Fianna Fáil governments, was heavily involved in the controversial arms crisis in the 1960s.
After Ms Chambers’s votes were redistributed, Mr Cowen won the nomination with 1,142 votes, with Mr Blaney on 1,071 votes.
One well-placed party figure said: ‘Blaney has been at this for months. Best of my knowledge, Lisa was in Brussels the week before the election and didn’t show up to a number of the conventions of that massive constituency.’
Ms Chambers told the Irish Daily Mail last night: ‘I was on the road for six months and put in a huge campaign. No one got to everything, it just wasn’t possible, but I was at lots of conventions.’
She also defended what she said was an ‘important’ visit to Brussels with the European Affairs Committee, saying she had continued campaigning on the phone while out in Brussels.
It is now believed to be more difficult for the party to add Ms Chambers to the election ticket, given that she trailed so far behind Mr Blaney.
Ms Chambers said: ‘I have certainly heard back from colleagues in the run-up to the convention, and that was being said. That’s politics and conventions.’
A source said: ‘The dilemma now is that if Blaney isn’t picked, then there wouldn’t be any candidate from Donegal in the election.
‘That would count for something. But I don’t see them running three. Now there’s no gender quota but I suspect the party is keen to run a genderbalanced ticket.’
The source added: ‘The more conventions you attend, the more opportunities you have. Cowen is the market brand name.’
Sources close to Ms Chambers admitted she was ‘disappointed not to do better... But she still got a good vote’.
Fianna Fáil has now selected three men, all aged 56, to contest the June election. Sitting FF MEPs Barry Andrews and Billy Kelleher will contest the Dublin and Ireland South constituencies, while sitting TD for Laois-Offaly Barry Cowen will contest the Midlands North-West.
Speaking in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Fine Gael MEP for Midlands North-West Maria Walsh criticised the all-male selection by Fianna Fail, saying: ‘I think male, pale and stale is a very common theme out here. We are not a representation if we continue to send certain age, certain skin colours, certain gendered people back here [to Strasbourg].’
Ms Walsh continued: ‘And the fact that a Government party has only selected... three men, well that’s on them.’
In response, Mr Cowen – who only entered the race before Christmas when Laois/Offaly was added to the Midlands North-West constituency – wrote on social media: ‘After five years that’s all you have to say? Personal insults about incomplete tickets?’
Mr Cowen said FG has yet to finalise its ticket for the European elections but Ms Walsh has said she will seek re-election. FG elected four female MEPs in the 2019 elections – Ms Walsh, Mairéad McGuinness, who became an EU Commissioner when Phil Hogan resigned over ‘Golfgate’, Deirdre Clune and Frances Fitzgerald.
However, it will struggle to elect four women in the upcoming election. Two of its MEPs, Ms Fitzgerald and Ms Clune, have said that they will not be seeking re-election. Meanwhile, European Commissioner Mairéad McGuinness has also said she will not seek to be re-elected when her term in office ends this year.
While the party has yet to finalise its candidate selection, it does not have ready-made established candidates of the same calibre to replace the departing high-profile female MEPs.
‘I was on the road for six months’ ‘I don’t see them running three’