Donnelly feels heat from FF royalty
FIANNA FáIL is set to approach the great-grandson of former taoiseach Seán Lemass, a councillor in Health Minister Stephen Donnelly’s constituency of Wicklow.
Rory O’Connor, 21, was one of the youngest candidates to be returned in the 2019 local elections.
He had been a member of Ógra Fianna Fáil, the youth wing of the party which his great-grandfather helped found, before being elected as a Green Independent.
One Fianna Fáil insider told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘When he approached HQ to run for Fianna Fáil, there was a sense of chill. He was not terribly desired.’
Referring to O’Connor’s base in the Health Minister’s heartland, the source said: ‘The return of the prodigal great-grandson of Lemass will not be too welcomed by Donnelly, but he may have to live with it.
‘Poor Stephen is, given his pedigree, a little insecure and now he has to face this grandson of Fianna Fáil royalty, a younger version of himself coming back to secure the Fianna Fáil seat. He can’t be happy.’
Mr Donnelly’s unease is likely to be enhanced by his own electoral struggles.
The former Social Democrat topped the poll with 14,348 votes as an Independent in 2016.
After joining Fianna Fáil, he struggled home in 2020 at the expense of the sitting party TD Pat Casey with just 5,468 votes, a third of his 2016 total.
The descendent of Mr Lemass shares a somewhat similar career profile to Mr Donnelly.
As a student of information technology communications, he has created a significant online presence through Facebook and Instagram.
Having embraced the Green agenda, Mr O’Connor still travels to council meetings by public transport and is the chair of the new climate and biodiversity committee.
He sits beside fellow Fianna Fáil defector Joe Behan on Wicklow County Council. But sources have indicated a return to his great-grandfather’s party is a growing possibility.
If the party’s approach is successful, it would put the young councillor on a direct collision course with the party’s sitting TD in the constituency.
Mr Donnelly is leading the country’s fight against Covid-19 and the rollout of the national vaccination programme.
One party source told the MoS: ‘He is, to put it mildly, a bit of a cuckoo in Stephen’s political nest all right.
‘But then Donnelly has been a cuckoo in a couple of nests himself.’
Mr Donnelly left the Social Democrats in 2016 and represented Wicklow as an Independent TD before joining Fianna Fáil in February 2017.
And there was considerable disquiet within the senior ranks of the party when Mr Donnelly was elevated to the position of Health Minister last year while other Fianna Fáil heavyweights were excluded from Cabinet.
One unsympathetic source said: ‘We are sure Stephen’s consultancy training says that competition is good. Put bluntly there are concerns about his longterm viability.
‘We need options and, to be blunt, the young and the talented are not queuing up. He is going to have to like it or lump it.’