Renua ruled out

FINBARR Filan has described his party’s 1% showing in Sligo/ Leitrim as “not great” but “credible” for a new party.

He polled 870 first preference votes, secured 32 transfers in total and was eliminated on the third count.

Ironically, the two main parties his party was set up to compete with did the best out of his 913 transfers: Marc MacSharry of Fianna Fáil gained the most number of Renua number 2’ s at 143 while Fine Gael’s Tony McLoughlin received the second highest amount of Filan’s number 2’ s at 101.

“It’s my first time out. I’ve never been involved before so I’m happy with that. I’m happy that people did vote for me in the first place. Disappointed that we didn’t get more. When we were on the door we thought people wanted a bigger change than there currently is,” he said.

“But people are running for safety again and sticking with the bigger parties.

“But this is a new project for us. We’re only starting. We’ll drive on for the local elections. You really need to have the councillor experience behind you. You need to be on the Council to have any kind of start.

“I couldn’t promise anything to anyone. I couldn’t help anyone with anything so we’re just starting basically from scratch. So I’m delighted that we got a foot hold. I’m delighted that we got the 2 %. Hopefully we’ll get the four TDs and just drive on for the next Council elections.

Filan denied it was the end of the road politically for him: “Ah no, we’re looking forward to the next Council elections. Renua is a brand new party, a brand new project. If we get the 2% nationally we’ll be able to get a bit of funding for that to go up against the bigger parties.

Up to now we’ve had no funding at all,” he told The Sligo Champion.

“People were looking for change but they haven’t voted for it,” he added.