This article is from page 4 of the 2011-11-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
CLARE Labour TD, Michael McNamara was working with the United Nations in Ethiopia in 2010 when he read on The Irish Times online edition that Michael D Higgins was going to contest the presidential election.
It proved a pivotal moment for both men. Higgins’ decision has proved an inspired one, while McNamara’s move to pledge his support to the Newmarket-on-Fergus man’s campaign there and then was one of the key factors that brought him into the Labour Party and sent him on his way to winning a Dáil seat.
“I remember writing to him from Ethiopia,” said McNamara after the declaration of Clare’s presdential vote. “It was in May 2010 and I wrote to him offering support in his campaign. I always believed that Michael D Higgins would be an excellent candidate and I supported him strongly in the parliamentary nomination process.
“I knew Michael D before I knew the Labour Party. When I was about 12 years of age, I remember him reading poetry in Scariff, in Mike McNamara’s Bar – it wouldn’t have been a Labour stronghold at the time, either Scariff or Mike Mac’s,” he added.
Now everything has changed. Scariff has a Labour Party TD, Clare has a Labour Party presidential, with Higgins capturing 44.3 per cent of the first-preference votes in the county – when Labour’s Mary Robinson was elected in 1990 she received 13,745 votes which translated into 31.7 per cent.
“It’s a proud day for the Labour Party in Clare and a proud day for Clare,” said Deputy McNamara. “I was worried for a while, because the opinion polls were strange. I was canvassing in Ennis and Shannon last week and was getting a great response. Nationally, I think in the last week people were reflecting that it wasn’t just a celebrity television contest. It was an important office and people were beginning to wonder how much they knew about the candidates. You would have got great odds last year on Labour comfortably winning a Dáil seat in Clare and having a Labour president from Clare.
“There has to be a lot of pride in the county to have a third president after Eamon de Valera and Paddy Hillery. I’m certainly very proud of that,” he added.