Fianna Fáil scraps freshers' week recruiting drive
Plans by members of the Fianna Fail to recruit university students at a freshers’ week have been scrapped, it emerged today.
Members of Fianna Fáil’s youth wing Ogra Fianna Fáil, had planned to person a stall this week at Magee College in Derry.
But a spokesman in the students’ union at the University of Ulster college in Derry confirmed that plans had been changed at the last minute ahead of Wednesday’s freshers’ event.
“We had been approached during the summer about the possibility of Ogra Fianna Fáil having a stall,” he said.
“We have just been informed that that will now not go ahead.”
Had Fianna Fáil’s youth wing press ahead it would have been the first time a party from the Republic had openly recruited at a Northern Ireland university.
It would also have added further fuel to speculation that the party is considering setting up branches in Northern Ireland after the next Assembly election.
At the last Fianna Fáil conference, delegates backed a motion that the party should organise north of the border.
A former vice chairman of the SDLP in Northern Ireland, Tom Kelly, has claimed that his party should consider a formal link up with Fianna Fáil as the contest for nationalist votes in Northern Ireland with Sinn Féin hots up.
In August, members of the national youth committee of Fianna Fáil held their monthly meeting in the Tower Hotel in Derry at the invitation of a local supporter of the party, Liam Bradley.
There have been calls in Derry for the party to move into the electoral spectrum in Northern Ireland.
But a spokeswoman for Fianna Fáil denied that the party organisation had planned a recruiting drive at universities north of the border.
“We have never been present in any of the Northern (Irish) colleges over the years,” she said.
“Northern issues are debated within the Northern Ireland committee.”
Students from Co Donegal attend Magee College over the border in Derry, as well as students from Northern Ireland.
It is believed any move to recruit members at Magee would have been seen as also an attempt to woo students from the Republic.
