As FG meet, î Cu’v throws down gauntlet on septic tanks

The elephant in the room at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting in Galway this week was whether the Gay Mitchell could win the Presidential Election from a position where, at present, he is more than ten per cent behind Michael D Higgins.

Of course there is a long way to go still before polling day, but, barring the introduction of some remarkable candidate whom nobody has thought of yet, the two front runners are Mitchell (FG) and Michael D Higgins (Labour), according to the polling.

Right now, the decision looks like it will be between those two front runners – on the edges of the meeting in the Radisson this week, TDs were quietly prepared to concede that a possible outcome could be both of them in the running to the end with Higgins winning out, or Gay Mitchell maybe going out at the latter stages of the contest and electing Higgins.

The polls also show that Higgins is a very strong ‘draw’ for transfers ... though it is important to state that this week only saw the launch of the Fine Gael campaign and the rumours were that they had quite a ‘war chest’ for campaigning, up to maybe a million euro.

That figure may be exaggerated and funding does not equal votes, as any politician will tell you. What will matter will be the campaign on the ground by TDs, Senators and councillors and Enda Kenny was very firmly spelling out this week the level of effort he is demanding from all levels of the organisation.

The party will be putting Gay Mitchell forward on the basis of his vast experiene in politics at all levels, together with a programme of using the Presidency to rebuild Ireland’s repuation abroad.

Said West Galway TD Brian Walsh: “Gay Mitchell has a remarkable electoral record of never having lost an election in a long career. He is a fighter and, no matter what the opinion polls say, that margin willl be tightening now that the Fine Gael campaign is getting underway in a big way.”

Meantime, at the conference in the Radisson, the TDs and Senators were being prepared for the tough economic announcements which are to come in the budget and for the tax and spending cut changes which are to stretch out over a few years yet. FG lost one TD, Liam Naughten, over the closure of Accident and Emergency in Roscommon County Hospital, but the word at the conference was that TDs will have to hold their nerve in the face of very difficult decisions to come as budgets are slashed by billions.

But if there were never those extraordinary budget difficulties, TDs in the west especially would have to contend with issues like the turf cutting controversy ... but that sounds like very small potatoes indeed compared to the new difficulty in relation to septic tanks and the need to licence them which has broken.

County Galway certainly would be among the highest for concentrations of septic tanks, especially in the west of the country where former minister Éamon Ó Cuív (FF) this week spelled out his objection, and said he would not pay the new charges. It will be a conflict in which newcomer TDs like Sean Kyne and Brian Walsh will find themselves embroiled more than most because of the sheer preponderance of septic tanks in West Galway where they were the only option for people who wanted to build their houses and were miles from water and sewerage schemes.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.