Key retirements by other Galway TDs may have been crucial to McCormack

A NUMBER of high-profile retirements by long-serving Galway TDs such as Michael D. Higgins, Paul Connaughton and Ulick Burke may have been crucial in deciding the fate of Dail Deputy Padraic McCormack when it came to the Fine Gael selection convention in the Salthill Hotel on Sunday night.

All three are in their sixties and all had announced they were leaving politics ... Ulick Burke even passing a remark about ‘time for us older fellas to move over.’ So, the spotlight would have come on McCormack’s age at 68, and may have been decisive in swinging a key number of delegate votes on Sunday night.

This would be despite the Deputy McCormack plea to delegates pointing out that he felt his experience and vote-getting power were capable of laying the foundation for FG to win two seats and that was the reason he was offering his name before the convention. Indeed he subsequently said it would have been easy for him to simply retire after he stint in the Dail since 1989.

The ‘age theory’ got some support among delegates to whom I chatted after the shock defeat of McCormack, as delegates tried to work out precisely why the defeat had come to someone who was a ‘good servant’ to the party, and a hard-working TD, in Galway since the early eighties.

After all, he was the one who withdrew from the General Election nomination race in 1982 so that the field was clear for a subsequently successful strategy of John Donnellan and Fintan Coogan winning an unprecedented two seats in the five-seater constituency,He was on hand again a few years later when the whole business of the Donnellan-Coogan ticket came crashing down and McCormack was elected a TD in 1989 and at every election since then, twice becoming Chairman of the Parliamentary Party (MEPs, TDs and Senators). In fact, in the last heave against Enda Kenny, he was seen as having performed impeccably.

It led to recent speculation that McCormack might be a Junior Minister, Leas Ceann Comhairle or Ceann Comhairle if Fine Gael formed the next government. It may have been hopes of such a prestige position which also made McCormack decide to allow his name to go before convention again on Sunday night, despite his unfashionable age and speculation of a distinctly lukewarm attitude towards him from Party HQ.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.