Perseverance pays off as SF candidate on cusp of victory

PERSEVERANCE pays off. When Sinn Féin’s Jonathan O Brien started out in politics, working under the tutelage of veteran party councillor and activist Don O’Leary, he was regarded as something a callow youth.

Few gave him a chance of ever winning a Dáil seat. After all, Don O’Leary had twice tried and failed.

But O’Brien, after being co-opted to Cork City Council to replace an ill O’Leary in 2000, slogged away.

He ran in the 2002 general election, but failed to win a seat. Better things were to come, however, when he topped the poll in his ward in the 2004 local elections.

That gave him a solid base to try again for the Dáil in the 2007 general election. Once again, he failed to make it, but improved his first-preference vote.

Now, after another four years of hard work on the ground, he is on the cusp of making an historic breakthrough for Sinn Féin in Cork North Central. Judging by the results of this poll, a seat looks well within his grasp.

His first-preference vote still won’t be enough. But he’ll win the seat thanks to a strong protest vote in Cork North Central, which will see him attract a large volume of transfers from the Socialist Party’s Mick Barry.

Mr O’Brien will also pick up transfers from Labour, which will concern the party, because it will damage its own chances of making a gain in the constituency.

The good news for Labour is that sitting TD Kathleen Lynch will retain her seat in style by topping the poll. The bad news is that more of her transfers seem destined for Sinn Féin’s Mr O’Brien rather than her own running mate, Cllr John Gilroy.

On the face of it, this is not at all surprising. Cork North Central is a constituency with both urban and rural halves. Traditionally, the seats are split in a 3:1 ratio between urban and rural. Ms Lynch and Mr O’Brien are both based in the urban half. It therefore makes sense that voters here would transfer more readily from Ms Lynch to Mr O’Brien simply because of familiarity with both candidates.

But Labour will be hoping to address this in the remaining days of the campaign, because Mr Gilroy has a real chance of winning the fourth and final seat in the constituency, which would represent a crucial gain for the party.

Mr Gilroy’s main rival is Fianna Fáil junior minister Billy Kelleher. Both effectively are fighting for the one rural seat on offer.

This poll indicates that Mr Kelleher, once transfers are factored in, could win the final seat by the narrowest of margins. But it’s so tight that it’s effectively too close to call.

So a relatively small number of transfers should make the crucial difference. Labour therefore needs to work on its vote management to increase the number of Kathleen Lynch’s transfers going to Mr Gilroy to give him the best possible chance of winning the seat.

It’s hard to assess whether this poll represents good or bad news for Mr Kelleher. On one hand, despite a collapse in Fianna Fáil’s vote, he is still in with a fighting chance of retaining his seat. On the other hand, it’s a stunning example of Fianna Fáil’s decline that it cannot even consider one seat safe in a constituency where it has two outgoing TDs.

Of course, one of those TDs is not standing again. Party leader Micheál Martin persuaded Noel O’Flynn to retire at this election to prevent the Fianna Fáil support being split and to give Mr Kelleher a better chance of clinging on. But based on these figures, even with Mr O’Flynn out of the picture, Mr Kelleher will still need an awful lot to go his way.

And beneath the headline findings in the poll, there is another cause of worry for the junior minister.

When asked about the main reason for choosing their preferred candidate, 20% of those intending to vote for Mr Kelleher said it was because of local work he had done. By stark contrast, 47% of those intending to vote for Mr Gilroy said it was because of his local work. If Mr Gilroy has a better reputation for hard work on the ground, it could clinch the seat for him.

Elsewhere, Fine Gael will hold the seat vacated by its retiring TD, Bernard Allen, with Cllr Dara Murphy replacing him. But the party’s vote in the constituency is set to fall from 28% at the last election to 25% in this one — starkly reversing the national trend.

This is due mostly, no doubt, to Mr Allen’s retirement — three decades of service to the constituency made him an immensely popular TD with a substantial personal vote. Given his retirement, it was perhaps inevitable the party would lose some of this vote.

Still, it will come as a disappointment to the party, because Fine Gael hungered to make a gain by winning two seats here this time round. That now looks unlikely, even if the party’s second candidate, Pat Burton, is set to perform strongly in his first general election.