Survey has FG struggling to win seat in key constituency

FINE GAEL will fail to win a seat in one of the constituencies the party targeted for a key gain at the general election, according to the results of a new poll.

Party strategists had prepared as far back as 2005 a list of targets which they said would be crucial to Fine Gael’s hopes of regaining power this summer.

Among them was former party leader Alan Dukes’s old seat in Kildare South.

Mr Dukes lost his seat in the 2002 general election, a stunning defeat emblematic of the party’s nationwide electoral haemorrhage that year.

However, when drawing up their list in 2005, the strategists marked out Kildare South for a possible gain in the belief that Fine Gael retained strong support in the constituency.

However, the new poll, published in today’s Kildare Nationalist, shows the party failing to make the impact necessary to win back a seat there.

The poll shows the three sitting TDs — Fianna Fáil’s Sean Power and Sean O Fearghail and Labour’s Jack Wall — on course to retain their seats.

The poll puts Mr Wall in pole position, with 27% of the first-preference vote — a significant achievement for the TD who only just edged out Mr Dukes for the third seat in 2002.

Mr Power, a junior minister, is on 26%, according to the poll, while Mr O Fearghaill is on 17%.

The two Fine Gael candidates selected for the constituency — Cllr Richard Daly and Alan Gillis, chairman of the board of management of Tallaght Hospital — are some distance behind.

Mr Daly currently has just 10% of the first-preference vote, according to the poll, while Mr Gillis has 7%.

“As such, Fine Gael simply take almost the same share of the vote from 2002, split between the two candidates sitting at this election, and don’t manage to make any significant gains for the party,” said Conal O’Boyle, editor of the Kildare Nationalist.

Elsewhere in the poll, Green Party candidate JJ Power is on 10%, an increase of 6% from 2002, but it won’t be enough to win him a seat. Sinn Féin’s candidate Threasa Bennitt, standing in the constituency for the first time, is on 4%.

The PDs have yet to nominate a candidate to replace Senator John Dardis, who announced in recent weeks that he would not run in the election.

The poll, conducted by Red C, surveyed 502 people in 32 sampling points across the constituency in early March.