A Fianna F‡il Connaughton aims to be new star rising in the East

It may be a familiar name to the voters in East Galway but he comes from a very different political background as the potential candidates are coming out of the woodwork in the aftermath of the Dáil boundary changes.

Having a Connaughton name and canvassing votes in the part of East Galway that has now gone into Roscommon should prove of benefit to a potential candidate even if his politics are very different to the one that the electorate are familiar with.

Fianna Fáil’s Ivan Connaughton is ideally located on the Galway-Roscommon boundary in Athleague and he has told The Connacht Tribune that he intends to again be a candidate in the new constituency.

In last year’s General Election he contested the Roscommon-South Leitrim constituency when he polled over 4,000 first preferences and was the ‘last man standing’ but failed to secure a seat.

The seats went to Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan and Denis Naughten with Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan winning an independent seat in Dáil Eireann.

But now the constituency has changed significantly in that Roscommon is now aligned with more than 20,000 voters in North and East Galway in an area stretching from Ballinasloe to Dunmore.

The Athleague-based auctioneer believes that he can be the Fianna Fáil candidate in the southern end of the constituency although he is set to face opposition from Orla Leyden, who has sat on Roscommon County Council for the past two terms.

His father Martin Connaughton has sat on Roscommon County Council to good effect since 1999 and Ivan Connaughton intends to retain this family seat at the 2014 local elections and then contest the Fianna Fáil convention for the 2016 general election in the new Galway-Roscommon constituency.

“I have a great working relationship with the people of East Galway through my profession and I was encouraged by the vote I received at the last general election when Fianna Fáil were going through its toughest ever campaign.

“We are likely to run two candidates in the Galway-Roscommon constituency and I am determined to be on the ballot paper in view of my performance on the last occasion and particularly as I was given only a relatively short run into the campaign as our convention was held only three months before the polling day,” Connaughton said. 

There is an outside possibility that Fine Gael TD Paul Connaughton jnr will run in the Roscommon-Galway constituency as his vote has been badly split in Mountbellew. While he would be voting in the three-seater Galway East, his parents are now located in the new Galway-Roscommon constituency just a couple of miles away.

If there were two Connaughton names on the ballot paper in Galway-Roscommon it would present something of a dilemma for the electorate who would have to study their voting preferences very carefully as Ivan Connaughton would appear above his Fine Gael rival.