Sean Gallagher pays a visit to town
SEAN Gallagher suffered one of the most bruising defeats in Irish political history when he crashed out of the 2011 Presidential election. He was on course to victory when he stumbled to answer a question on a live debate on RTE. It didn’t matter that it subsequently emerged that the allegation came from a fake twitter account, the damage was done.
For eighteen months after the election, his phone didn’t ring. ‘No one called except for close family and friends,’ he recalls.
It was a tough time. ‘Not because I wasn’t successful in winning but because of the way it ended,’ he says. The timing of the RTE Frontline programme and the radio show the following morning, left him with no time to regroup and fight back.
‘On a higher point, what mattered to me in 2011 still matters
to me but with a different emphasis. At the time there was a crisis in unemployment and emigration and our young people were leaving which was a source of despair all over the country, and I wanted to do something about it,’ he explains. ‘At the time I was very clear, given my background in youth, development, and community enterprise and jobs, and having worked for InterTrade Ireland, that I wanted to help the country.’
Although he nows lives in Delganey, Co Wicklow, his roots are along the Border. ‘I was born in Monaghan, grew up in Cavan. My father is from Donegal and I spent nearly twenty years in Louth,’ he says.
He came to Drogheda last week and met the members of the Men’s Shed before travelling on to Dundalk.