Party will not lose seats over cutbacks, claims Cowen

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen is not concerned that his party will lose seats in the local and European elections next summer because of cutbacks in government spending.

The Fianna Fáil leader believes the public understand that difficult decisions have to be made and said his party is hoping to win back some of the seats lost in the last local election in 2004.

“The local elections next year will be contested against whatever the backdrop is, we won’t be unique in that set of circumstances,” the Taoiseach said yesterday.

“People expect their government to come up with the appropriate policy responses for what is a new economic situation that we’re dealing with. So we have to give the direction and the leadership and the rationale and the reasons why we have to take the choices we are going to take.”

“There is no painless way of doing this. This is an exercise that will involve having to make political choices and sticking by them and going out and explaining to people why it is we are taking the route we are taking,” he said.

Mr Cowen was speaking after a meeting of Fianna Fáil parliamentary party members to discuss next year’s elections.

The Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, and general secretary of the party, Sean Dorgan, addressed the meeting which took place during the Fianna Fáil think-in at the Clayton Hotel in Galway.

Fianna Fáil lost about a fifth of its council seats in the last local elections. Mr Cowen said the party has learnt from mistakes made in the 2004 vote.

“Certainly, 30% of those seats were lost on the basis of the candidate strategy we adopted ourselves. We had enough votes, we had too many candidates in some places which meant that we lost the transfer rate across and therefore lost the seats,” he said.

Mr Dorgan is carrying out a strategic review of all aspects of the party organisation which will be presented to Mr Cowen in the coming weeks.

The Taoiseach said there are about 700 prospective candidates who have shown their interest in standing for Fianna Fáil.

“We’ve a very solid record of achievement at local level in terms of the support we’ve been able to give local authorities to develop local services.

“I’m satisfied that those councillors who did that work and associated themselves with the communities that have benefited from that work have every prospect of success and we’re also looking for new and other candidates, both young and women candidates, to get balance. So that work is well in hand,” he said.