The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
New Politics: The election that changed everything
WHEN it came to politics obviously the defining event of the year in the county was February’s General Election which turned Kerry’s political world on its head and, thanks to the Healy-Rae brothers’ astonishing success, stunned the entire country.
With Kerry a unified, single constituency for the first time since 1937 there was always going to be drama as at least one sitting TD was guaranteed to lose their seat.
However, what transpired proved far more surprising than almost any political pundits would have predicted just a few weeks before polling day.
As the year began, aside from the fact that one TD was sure to lose their seat, the election race in Kerry looked set to be a relatively lacklustre affair and there was little real excitement on the campaign trail.
The newly introduced candidate gender quotas had led to a little friction at some of the main parties’ selection conventions but, in reality, there was little true drama to be found on the hustings.
That all changed on February 5, just two days after the election was called, with the shock news that Independent TD Tom Fleming had decided to bow out of the race not to seek re-election.
Fleming’s decision, which few had seen coming, blew the race wide open and put a massive swathe of the county and thousands of votes up for grabs.
Ahead of the election Killarney based Kerry Independent Alliance Councillor Michael Gleeson had been widely tipped as a contender who could deliver an upset and wrest a seat away from the Government parties.
In January he had declared he wasn’t going to run but following Tom Fleming’s departure speculation once again mounted that he might be tempted to enter the fray. The former Labour man had huge local support and with Fleming out of the picture it was thought he would be extremely well positioned for a Dáil run.
In what would turn out to be one of the most decisive moments of the campaign Cllr Gleeson stuck to his guns and opted to remain out of the race. The door opened by Fleming remained wide open and Danny Healy-Rae saw his chance.
On February 11 - with literally minutes to go before the deadline for handing in nomination papers expired – the Independent Councillor caused a political earthquake when he announced he would be joining his brother, sitting TD Michael, on the ticket.
The move, a massive gamble on the Healy-Rae dynasty’s part, came completely out of the blue and took the main party candidates entirely by surprise.
Ahead of Danny’s announcement no one doubted that Michael, a phenomenally popular politician, would be returned to the Dáil but what would the presence of a second Healy-Rae on the ticket do to the family’s vote?
Did the Kilgarvan brothers have the support to win two seats? Could a split in the family’s vote cost Michael his seat? What impact would this have on the other parties and, if Danny was successful, who would fall victim?
As it turned out the Healy Rae’s gamble paid off in absolutely spectacular fashion. A masterfully executed strategy, which bore all the hallmarks of their late father’s local
political genius, saw the brothers carve up the county between them in a bid to maximise their vote.
And maximise it they did. From early on count day in Killarney it was apparent from the tallies that the Healy-Rae Strategy had worked and they had won massive support across the entire county.
When the results of the first count came in they were breath-taking. Michael with 20,378 first preference votes and Danny with 9,991 took 38.3 per cent of the vote, utterly demolishing their rivals.
As we wrote in the immediate aftermath of the election everyone was well aware that the Healy-Rae’s run a plant hire company but no one expected to actually be steamrollered by their all conquering electoral machine.
Fine Gael and Labour were savaged by the voters. Long serving TD and Minister Jimmy Deenihan bagged just 6,489 votes and lost his seat. Deenihan’s running mate Deputy Brendan Griffin fought a clever and skilful campaign and despite mounting public anger with the Government he fared well winning 9,674 votes and retaining his seat comfortably.
Meanwhile, as happened across the country, Labour’s support collapsed and Arthur Spring lost the seat he had won with ease just five years earlier.
It seemed that just as the Healy-Rae dynasty was rising to its peak the Spring tide was at its lowest ever ebb.
It was also probably no coincidence that the only Government TD to survive the rout in Kerry was also the only one who had actually directly faced off against the Healy-Rae machine in a previous election.
While the Government parties floundered in most constituencies both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein capitalised.
This was also the case in Kerry where well-known, long serving and popular councillor John Brassil won a seat for Fianna Fáil.
His win – and the success of Cllr Norma Moriarty who polled well but did not win a seat - reversed the party’s disastrous 2011 result which had seen both John O’Donoghue and Tom McEllistrim lose their seats leaving Kerry with no Fianna Fáil TD for the first time since 1926.
Sinn Féin also enjoyed a successful day at Labour’s expense. Despite an early scare on count day -when it looked as though Michael Healy-Rae’s incursion into Tralee might have placed Martin Ferris seat in jeopardy – the party maintained it’s support and Ferris held on to the seat he has held since 2002.
Following Sinn Féin’s landslide win in the town at the 2014 local elections – in which Toireasa Ferris and Pat Daly annihilated the party’s traditional local opponents in the Labour party – Martin Ferris success in holding his seat would seem to have consolidated Sinn Féin’s hold on the county capital for the foreseeable future.
Without major changes Labour and the Spring dynasty, whose hold on Tralee was once seen as unassailable, now look highly unlikely to make any great inroads in the town in the short term.
With their traditional support base in Tralee now lost, and without any great level of support in Killarney and across the rest of the county, Labour’s pains in Kerry may only be beginning.