This article is from page 2 of the 2011-03-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
FOR only the second time in the history of the State, Clare will be without a full cabinet ministry, while having three government TDs elected in the county.
This state of affairs will be confirmed on Wednesday when Enda Kenny becomes the country’s 13th Taoiseach and selects a Cabinet that won’t have any Clare representation.
The only other time when a government with three TDs in Clare failed to win a seat at Cabinet was during the ill-fated 1992-94 coalition between Fianna Fáil and Labour.
Now, almost two decades on, Clare’s failure to win high office is being blamed locally on “internal Fine Gael politics” that came between the party and a history-making haul of three seats in the constituency.
“The fact is,” one Fine Gael councillor told The Clare People this week, “that had Fine Gael shown the ambition to win three seats and blow Fianna Fáil out of the water altogether and then gone out and done it, Clare could not have been denied the right to sit at Cabinet.
“This is what Fianna Fáil did in 1997. They had a vote strategy and managed their vote brilliantly rather than having a situation where every candidate was out for themselves and as a result they won three seats. The reward was a full ministry. Fine Gael could have that now,” the councillor claimed.
Now Fine Gael are clinging to the hope that a junior ministry will come the county’s way, but both Pat Breen and Joe Carey could be left disappointed as the massive majority that see the combined Fine Gael/Labour numbers at 113 means huge competition for Minister of State positions.
“We have returned three Government TDs here tonight and three Government TDs can make a difference. I would hope also that the Taoiseach would take the opportunity to give one of us in Government a ministry,” General Election poll-topper Pat Breen told The Clare People last week.
However, Clare’s failure to gain any type of post would leave former TD Dónal Carey as the only politician from the Fine Gael or Labour benches to have held down a government ministry, having served as Minister of State during the lifetime of the Rainbow coalition from 1994 to ‘97.