Dooley back with a vengeance to try win back Dáil seat

*Senator Timmy Dooley (FF). Photograph: John Mangan

DEFEATED IN 2020, Senator Timmy Dooley (FF) is back with a vengeance as he tries to reclaim a seat in Dáil Éireann.

A dramatic tenth count in February 2020 saw Clare’s four TDs elected in the one full swoop but it was also the moment when Dooley’s thirteen year stint as a TD came to an abrupt end.

Standing in The Falls Hotel on that occasion was a lowpoint in his political career, he acknowledged. “I never felt resentful, I was most disappointed for my family, friends and supporters who worked tirelessly through wet, wind and cold, I felt I had let them down and that I had taken a decision in the interest of the party, their only focus is to see you elected”.

He added, “I felt bad for them that the decision I made to go after two seats impacted negatively on them but from a party perspective and in the broader interests of the county I felt I had done the right thing, there’s no point in a player going out to win an All Star by just being greedy and hungry, attempting to scoring all the points and starring themselves and the team lose, I’ve always felt if team Fianna Fáil in Clare is stronger and wins then the county wins because we’ve the potential for a Minister rather than an All Star performance where we head the poll and not bringing in a running mate”.

In 2016, he topped the poll with 10,216 first preferences but the vote dipped to 7,763 in 2020. “We had to go try win two seats, we didn’t make it narrowly, we have an opportunity now with the benefit of hindsight to do it differently and we’re trying to win two seats, I’m hopeful we do it this time, I’ll need to bring back a little bit of the vote that I lost, I don’t need a lot but if I get a few hundred extra votes on number ones then I can make it”.

Mountshannon native Dooley is in no doubt that the strategy to divide the county between candidates is what lost him his seat. “I was the person with the highest number of ones in the country that didn’t get elected, nobody got more number ones across Ireland than I and didn’t get elected, there was a difference of about 250 votes at the end, we managed it very tightly but too tightly for me. I had to accept that, I couldn’t blame anybody else”.

He continued, “we narrowly missed, we had to accept that and move on, the public make their decisions, we didn’t see the tide for Sinn Féin at the time, it caught us unaware and by the time we could see it I had already ceded ground so I didn’t travel into South-East Clare or West Clare, I met many friends, supporters of mine and people who I helped over the years and am meeting again now who have said ‘oh God if we had to know that you needed our support then we would have been with you but you chose not to seek it or come back into the area’, thankfully they are now rallying around me and saying they won’t make that mistake again so it is clear to me that the support is there”.

It’s open country for Fianna Fáil this time, he said. “I haven’t been asked by the party leader to restrict my canvassing on this occasion nor has any from headquarters asked me to, I’m not aware if any other candidate has been, I haven’t been so obviously I’m not going into Doonbeg or the area around Rita because it is her home base, neither am I canvassing in Meelick which is where Cathal comes from originally but he lives in Westbury so I’m staying out of those areas out of respect for those”.

Key priorities for his campaign this time include, “resolving the health crisis in the Mid-West”, the future of Shannon Airport and Moneypoint’s development for floating wind energy.

Work has started to improve the health services in the region, he maintained. “There’s additional beds going into Ennis, there has been a very significant increase on beds going into Limerick, there’s been over 1000 employed since Stephen Donnelly became the Minister for Health in the Limerick hospital but it is not enough because the infrastructure is creaking, absolute bed capacity and there is the long-term vision, we’re waiting on the HIQA report to establish what we know the need is for an additional accident and emergency department in the region but that can’t come in isolation, it has to be part of a model three hospital because you can’t have an A&E without the disciplines and specialities as part of it, of course I and everybody else that is elected for Clare will be fighting to have that hospital in Co Clare”. His own preference is for a model three hospital on a greenfield site and to retain Ennis Hospital also.

Given that he was a Government TD when Ennis was downgraded from a model three hospital, there is still backlash from the public towards him on the matter. He said the downgrading “wasn’t a political decision” but one made by the HSE “because they couldn’t get consultants to work in Ennis”.

He added, “It was a reality that the hospital couldn’t continue to provide an A&E because they quite frankly didn’t have the doctors, at a stage they did some sort of a patch work where they got four non-hospital consultant doctors to provide a degree of cover but sadly quite a number of people that I was aware of and that Tony Killeen was aware of at the time had sadly died”.

Dooley was adamant no more of a fight could have been put up by Clare’s TDs at the time. “We fought tooth and nail to get consultants to work in the hospital, we couldn’t get them, they couldn’t be got, we put up as much pressure as we could to the HSE, it wasn’t about money at the time, it was that senior consultants were not prepared to work in a small hospital because the level of activity there was not to a level that would maintain their skillsets. Where the big problems happened was that Limerick never had the investment that it needed to take on the extra patients coming from Nenagh, Clare and from St John’s because we had a financial calamity and crash in 2009, 10 and 11 so the plans to invest in Limerick hospital never materialised so it never became the Centre of Excellence which was proposed to happen”.

Last November, Timmy threatened not to run in the General Election unless Broadford and Cooraclare received approval for inclusion in a €50m national pilot wastewater scheme, their inclusion was confirmed a month later but works have yet to start. “What I had said at the time was unless a decision was taken to move that project then I wouldn’t have allowed myself to go forward as a candidate, we got that over the line, the announcement was made, the money has been allocated and the project is now back firmly and squarely with Clare County Council to deliver for both Cooraclare and Broadford, I felt it was the right thing to do at the time because the Minister has taken it so far, I had worked with officials, we had a plan that could work, there was still a hesitancy about this new departure, I felt that I couldn’t stand by and watch it wither like other proposals gone before, I was able to use that experience to know when the right time to push was. If we had a Minister it wouldn’t have taken as long or it wouldn’t have been as arduous or we may not have had to issue the threat that I did at the time”.

Five years ago, he had to compete with Michael McNamara (IND) for votes in East Clare and now he is battling with Cllr Joe Cooney (FG). “There is always going to be somebody contesting, what I’d like to think that I have is a countywide base, I’ve worked in communities across the county, I’ve assisted people across the county, people know me for good or ill across the county, they know what I can do and they know what I have done, they will make their decision based on that, they will also reflect on what are the best chances of having a representative in that sphere of influence, I think they will be looking to people with Oireachtas experience, they will make their mind up on that, that is where it is decision time for people to decide do you elect somebody that is in the opposition that wants to participate as a representative to be against the Government or do you want somebody to be part of that that can help to deliver, the great thing is it is a democracy and there is twenty candidates making their pitch”.