I was telling you lately that Fine Gael Leader Enda Kenny will be demanding that Galway West return an extra FG Dáil Deputy when it comes to the next General Election. He has told ‘the lads’ as much and might need that extra seat to get into government.

The speculation has been not alone on who would join sitting Dáil Deputy Padraic McCormack on the FG ticket, but whether long-serving McCormack would stand for re-election one more time if the election were to be as far away as 2012.

But the high-profile success last week by McCormack in winning the Chair of the FG Parliamentary Party (TDs, Senators and MEPs), plus the recent issuing of colour political literature by McCormack in the constituency, have made people in the Fine Gael organisation in Galway West, stop in their tracks and make no presumptions at all!
 

When it came to the counting last week, in the secret ballot for the FG Chair, I understand the first count gave McCormack 26 votes, outgoing Chairman Tom Hayes TD (Tipperary) 19 votes, and Joe McHugh TD (Donegal) 15 votes. When McHugh was eliminated, McCormack won by two votes . . . a not inconsiderable victory either by two of McCormacks staunchest campaigners, Michael Ring TD (Mayo) and Ulick Burke TD (Galway East), who might be regarded as ‘old style’ Fine Gael.

McCormack, who has been in the Dáil since 1989 but made his first bid to win a seat in 1981, has been keeping his own counsel on whether he intends to stand at the next election, but last week’s victory, plus his enthusiasm for the business at constituency level, show that anyone writing him off might like to think again.

All of which will be of huge interest to the others in the constituency who are eyeing-up a place on the FG election ticket in Galway West – Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames, Councillor Brian Walsh, Cllr Padraig Conneely, Cllr Sean Kyne, Cllr Hildegarde Naughton, and JJ Lee.
 

On the Enda Kenny visit to Galway during last June’s Local Elections campaign, during that walkabout by Kenny down Galway’s main street, Walsh went very publicly on the record as seeking a nomination.

Apart from Healy-Eames, he might be regarded as a ‘front runner’ for a nomination – though he was nominated in the 2007 General Election, but stepped down for family reasons. Kenny persuaded McCormack to stand again, though McCormack had announced weeks earlier that he was retiring.

There are certainly no indications of a McCormack retirement now – but, if he is going to lead the ticket in the next election, he will not underestimate the extent of the task confronting FG in winning two Dáil seats.

In the 2007 General Election, FG got 20% of the first preferences and they will need the best part of 10% extra if they are to secure two Dáil seats out of the five in Galway West. So, party strategists will have to pick a ticket to do just that and hope that opinion poll levels remain high for FG nationally and ‘translate’ to support levels in Galway West.
 

Galway West is not a constituency like others in the western seaboard where it is a direct fight between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and Kenny is a potential Mayo Taoiseach. In Galway West the political ‘market’ is very fractured – two Fianna Fáil (Eamon Ó Cuív and Frank Fahey) one Fine Gael (McCormack), one Independent (Noel Grealish– former PD), and one Labour (Michael D Higgins).

The last time Fine Gael held two seats in Galway West was way back in 1982 when John Donnellan and Fintan Coogan were both elected – and, ironically, McCormack agreed not to contest so that the FG party strategy of winning two seats might succeed. However, in that November 1982 election (the third general election in 18 months), the one to lose his Dáil seat to Fine Gael was Labour’s Higgins.

Right now, one of the intriguing pieces of speculation in Galway West is whether Higgins, who has been in the Dáil since 1987, will stand again if the election is not in the near future . . . and whether he might run for election to the Presidency when Mary McAleese finishes her term of office.

As one Fine Gaeler put it this week . . . “sure, by the next General Election, Michael D might have posh new address in ‘The Park’ if the speculation about him running is anything to go by”.

In any contest for ‘The Park,’ there are rumours of any number of high-profile possible contenders. Higgins hasn’t been ruling himself either in or out of the race and certainly would be a powerful ‘draw’ in view of present FF unpopularity in the opinion polls . . . but FF are not easily beaten and there is the possible candidature of MEP Brian Crowley, a huge vote-getter in Munster and a very formidable campaigner indeed.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.