McEllistrim battling for Dáil survival

STILL wearing his overcoat and leaning forward on a chair in his somewhat chilly constituency office in Tralee town centre, battle-hardened TD Martin Ferris shakes his head and reveals that he has never before experienced a reaction quite like what he is encountering on the doorsteps.

He describes himself as a tough political street-fighter but concedes that nothing could have prepared him for the sight of grown men and women standing weeping at their own front doors because they have no work, no money and no hope.

“It’s a very painful canvass and there are so many people visibly hurting. They are breaking down on the doorsteps because they have lost their jobs, they are losing their children to emigration and they have nothing, absolutely nothing to spend,” he said.

The Sinn Féin TD said the feedback he is getting is that Fianna Fáil will have a big price to pay for imposing cuts in pensions, the unprecedented unemployment crisis and the party’s determination to bail out the banks at a time when already hard-pressed families were finding it difficult to put a loaf of bread on the table.

“The people have had enough and it is very fast reaching a stage where we will see more protests on the streets. Unless a proactive approach is taken to right the wrongs, the people will take to the streets to voice their anger — they can only take so much,” he warned.

But, before the street confrontation commences, there is an election to be fought. Ferris, first elected to the Dáil in 1997, when he claimed the considerable scalp of former Tánaiste Dick Spring, is preparing for the biggest battle of his political life, with a new generation of the Spring dynasty seeking a reversal of fortunes.

The tussle between the seasoned Sinn Féin man and the ambitious Mayor of Tralee, Arthur J Spring, a former banker who now describes himself as an entrepreneur, will be one of the biggest talking points of Election 2011.

Ferris acknowledges that Mr Spring will be a force to be reckoned with, particularly as the family name holds so much currency in Kerry and, in particular, in the Tralee urban area, but he insists there are no easy seats in the new-look Kerry North-Limerick West constituency.

“As I see it, Jimmy Deenihan is an absolute certainty as Fine Gael has a huge surge behind it. Kerry will be looking on Mr Deenihan to become a junior or senior minister but, after that, there will be three of us fighting for the other two seats,” he said.

With all indications and opinion polls pointing to a Spring and Ferris success, the fall guy is likely to be Fianna Fáil’s Thomas McEllistrim who is understood to be under real pressure to hold his seat. The former secondary school teacher, the third generation of the McEllistrim family to hold a Dáil seat, could pay a big price for being a part of the most unpopular administration in the history of the State and his remarkably low profile, allied to his infamous reluctance to give media interviews, won’t have helped his cause at a time when people are demanding action as well as answers.

Deputy Deenihan, for his part, will be anxious to play down justified speculation that he will be an emphatic poll-topper on February 25 even though seasoned observers on all sides agree that it might now be a faster option to weigh his votes rather than count them.

Given his 26 years in the Dáil, his excellent working relationship with party leader Enda Kenny and his consistently power-packed performances in successive elections, Mr Deenihan can almost certainly look forward to a seat at the cabinet table if, as expected, Mr Kenny spearheads the next administration.

A local opinion poll, conducted this week by students at the Institute of Technology in Tralee and published in The Kerryman, gives Mr Deenihan an emphatic 30.1% of the vote with Mr Spring trailing on 16.8%, Mr Ferris on 9.2% and Mr McEllistrim on 8.1%.

Mr Deenihan’s running mate, Glin, Co Limerick-based Councillor John Sheahan, is on 6.9% and it would necessitate a major upset and an unprecedented 100% transfer rate to give the party even an outside chance of two seats.

With independent candidates Dr Bridget O’Brien, Mary Fitzgibbon, Michael Reidy, Sam Locke and John McKenna, as well as Tom O’Donovan of the Green Party all likely to poll poorly by comparison, the real battle in Kerry North-Limerick West is likely to be between Mr Ferris and Mr McEllistrim to determine who will join Mr Deenihan and Mr Spring in the corridors of power. At this late stage, the smart money is on the street-wise Sinn Féin man.

Mr Ferris said he is confident of personal success but it is a source of real regret that efforts to carve out an alliance of the left have proved unsuccessful and he insists the finger of blame should be pointed at Mr Spring’s Labour colleagues.

“We had a chance to offer a real alternative but Labour has moved to the centre right and walked away from the working class families. As I see it, Labour is prostituting itself to get into government with Fine Gael,” he said.