FF left wanting as council seat lies vacant for months

FIANNA FÁIL has been accused of abandoning a large swathe of west Cork by failing to replace one of its county councillors who resigned last summer.

Fine Gael members took great pleasure, yesterday, in teasing their FF counterparts about the issue at a council meeting in County Hall.

Some cheekily asked if the ‘Soldiers of Destiny’ were unable to find any ‘foot soldiers’ to do the job.

Cllr Donal Casey, who ran a number of garages and tyre centres, announced last August that he was handing over the businesses to relatives and also retiring from local politics.

Almost immediately, the FF party started to canvass potential replacements in the Bantry electoral area and up to 15 people are understood to have put their names forward.

The front-runners were said to be former county councillor Vivian O’Callaghan and Gerard O’Donovan, the son of Senator Denis O’Donovan.

Party headquarters carried out interviews locally and then asked the candidates to attend further interviews in Dublin but no decision has been made.

FG’s Cllr John O’Shea sarcastically asked if FF Cllr Danny Crowley, who is based in Adrigole, was having to carry the flag and the workload for the party in all the west Cork peninsulas.

“If they [FF] can’t sort it out then why not let the people locally do it. How much more time is this going to take,” Cllr O’Shea said.

FF councillors then started shouting Cllr O’Shea down. Meanwhile, his compatriots backed him and several FG members were heard claiming that FF headquarters was worried it didn’t have a strong enough candidate to put forward.

FF leader on the council, Cllr Alan Coleman, asked council officials to wait another month, when he expected there to be a replacement for Cllr Casey.

It is understood the number of candidates is down to six — others, apart from the two already mentioned are Michael Collins, a community activist in Schull; Bantry town councillors Pat ‘Bonna’ Kelly, Aidan McCarthy, and Patrick Murphy.

Cllr Danny Crowley said he was very disappointed that his party headquarters was taking so long to make a decision. Both he and Cllr Coleman admitted that there was a lot of disquiet among FF grassroots in the region.

“If a convention was called locally a decision would have been made months ago,” Cllr Coleman said.

He said he was struggling to cope with the workload, because he didn’t have a colleague to share it with.