Main parties rattled as Sinn Féin’s untried candidates start to make real inroads
IF YOU were to listen to Sinn Féin’s public speeches and private briefings you could believe that Gerry Adams’s arrest is the first in history to be inspired by an opinion poll.
Sinn Féin had been regularly hitting the low twenties in opinion polls since the 2011 General Election but it was a poll that broke last weekend which appeared to shake Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to their respective cores.
It showed Sinn Féin taking a seat in each of the three European constituencies. In Leinster House on Wednesday morning Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour TDs confirmed that the feedback in election canvasses was that Sinn Féin was making serious inroads in middle-class areas and they were afraid that the party was conducting a bloodless coup.
Then came Adams’s arrest. Now it remains to be seen how much of that soft vote will evaporate between now and the May 23 local and European elections.
This morning’s RED C poll won’t reveal the full impact as most of it was it was conducted before the arrest. However, it shows the party in either second or third place in all three European constituencies.
Like his Dáil colleague Mary Lou McDonald, Martin Ferris, Sinn Féin TD for Kerry North, is in no doubt about what has happened, however. Mr Ferris is a convicted gun runner and, unlike Adams, makes no attempt to distance himself from his military past. He rarely gives interviews but when he spoke to the Mail on Sunday last week he reminded us that he was arrested in the run-up to the 2002 General Election and draws parallels with the incarceration of Adams.
‘What I say in relation to Gerry’s arrest is that I would question the timing of it as being politically motivated,’ said the 62year old. He compared the timing of the arrest three weeks before the election to his own arrest and that of his ‘entire directorate’ in 2002, two months before the election. They were all released without charge.
He and his supporters were arrested and investigated in relation to allegations of antidrug vigilantism. Mr Ferris had been arrested previously in 1984 when he was apprehended skippering a trawler called the Marita Ann as he attempted to smuggle guns and explosives into Ireland. He was convicted and served ten years in the high security Portlaoise Prison.
However, he questioned the timing of his 2002 arrest.
Despite their constant protestations, politicians, eternally insecure, ascribe an unwarranted and increasing importance to opinion polls. Last weekend’s figures truly put Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil in a spin. The seismic election of 2011 appears to have put Sinn Féin in the ascendancy and the established parties cannot seem to comprehend the new reality, according to Mr Ferris and his colleagues.
‘I think there have been three opinion polls in the last three weeks and each and every one of them has suggest that Sinn Féin is on or above 20%, and they also suggest that Sinn Féin are in a very good position to win three European parliament seats in the three constituencies in the 26 counties,’ says Mr Ferris. ‘The timing of Gerry’s offer to facilitate the PSNI regarding outstanding issues about Jean McConville, I think they took this opportunity for political reasons in order to damage Sinn Féin in the upcoming elections both north and south. ‘I have been canvassing practically every day in Dublin, Kerry and Athlone and there is no doubt that there is a swing to Sinn Féin. I have never seen in my lifetime the support that is coming towards Sinn Féin at this point in time.
‘And I am quite certain that all of the political parties are aware of this. And also the very fact that by the timing of the questioning of Gerry in relation to the outstanding issues in the North
certainly, I have no doubt that it is politically motivated.’
We will never know the truth or otherwise of this well thought-out conspiracy theory. But until 8pm last Wednesday it was expected that three Euro candidates would be elected for Sinn Féin. And what had exacerbated the shock was that the three – Lynn Boylan, Liadh Ní Riada and Matt Carthy – had truly come from nowhere.
They are up against established poilticians – ministers (Brian Hayes), former ministers (Pat the Cope Gallagher), TDs and long-standing MEPs – and are posing a threat to them all.
Lynn Boylan, a member of the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle, had contested the 2007 general election and the 2009 local election in South Kerry under the Irish version of her name. She failed to be elected.
She moved to Ballymun where, according to Sinn Féin, she works ‘as a community programme coordinator’.
According to some polls, she could beat Brian Hayes out of a potential seat.
Matt Carthy is Sinn Féin candidate for the 2014 European elections in the newly created Midlands, North, West constituency. Married with four children, the 36-year-old hails from the Republican heartland of Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan having spent much of his childhood in Co. Roscommon.
A Monaghan town councillor with no significant political pedigree, he threatens to knock out a political heavyweight and sitting MEP in Fine Gael’s Jim Higgins or even Fianna Fáil’s Pat the Cope Gallagher.
Then in Ireland South, if Liadh Ní Riada is a prototype of the new Sinn Féin candidate, the political establishment really is in trouble. She is the youngest daughter of
composer Seán Ó Riada. She has worked as a producer and director with RTE and TG4 and is fluent in Irish and French.
Martin McGuinness regularly polled around 18%-19% in the run-up to the 2011 presidential campaign but eventually took just 10%. But, of course, few carry the Provo baggage that McGuinness does.
The European candidates are young, in two cases have large families, and are unblemished by connections with the dark past. Few in Ireland would have a problem voting for Sean Ó Riada’s daughter.
About a month ago a national poll put Fine Gael at 25 per cent, Labour at 8%; Fianna Fáil, 25%; Sinn Féin at 21% and Independents at 21%. But with Sinn Féin, it is difficult to predict how these figures will translate in the local elections, which are notoriously oblivious to national trends. What 21% means for Sinn Féin at local level will be defined by the fact that they run far fewer candidates in these elections.
Fianna Fáil won 25% of the vote in the 2009 local election and won 218 out of 883 seats, in a result that was considered a huge disappointment at the time. At a very, very rough estimate, Sinn Féin’s 21% or 22% mean it could be heading for 175 seats.
But Sinn Féin is running only 196 candida dates. The party is renowned for its di disciplined vote management, and traditio tionally gets a greater share of its candida dates elected than other parties.