Independent Collins aims to ‘get things done’

Ironically, a man called Michael Collins was one of the reasons Fine Gael got hammered in West Cork.

There were other issues which conspired against the party, not least that it was deemed foolhardy to run six outgoing candidates in a constituency which had been reduced from a 12 to eight-seater.

However, the party believed that, even on a very bad day, it would return four of them.

It returned just two, as 46-year-old Independent Michael Collins gate-crashed the ball, hoovering up 3,409 first preferences, nearly 1,000 ahead of his nearest rival.

He said he hadn’t deliberately targeted any party, but simply tried to garner as many votes as he could for himself. But it was Fine Gael — whose spiritual leader was the patriot Michael Collins — which got hurt most.

The married father of three put his success down to being involved in 20 different voluntary organisations in the area.

“When canvassing, a lot of people would say to me, ‘sure you’re doing the job already [representing people] so you’re only making it official’ by getting elected,” said Mr Collins.

The list of voluntary endeavour is envious. He’s on community councils, community alerts, is spokesman for Cork County Voluntary Forum, vice chairman of West Cork Rural Transport, on the board of West Cork Development Partnership, and is spokesman for the action group West Cork Community Alliance, which has vigorously campaigned against the closure of rural Garda stations, banks, schools, and post offices.

“My tallymen were telling me I was getting transfers from all parties,” he said. “People saw me as a true Independent as I was never a member of a political party in my life.”

The part-time farmer said he had 38 community volunteers canvassing for him and based his campaign headquarters at the Boston Bar, Bantry, which is owned by his brother, Danny.

“I’m going into the county council chamber to get things done for the people of West Cork,” he said. “The area has been suffering for years and that can’t be allowed to continue.

“The Government will have to take a long, hard look at where it went wrong. We have been totally and utterly left behind in West Cork. We need to create employ-ment in rural Ireland, yet we have shocking mobile and broadband coverage here and nobody seems willing to tackle it.”

He also said the road network was in very poor shape and needed significant upgrading to attract new industries.

For more in depth updates and analysis on the fallout from this year's election and access to our comprehensive results database visit our special Election 2014 section.