*Cllr Joe Cooney, Pat Breen, Cllr Mary Howard, Dr Tom Nolan and Madeline Taylor-Quinn. Photograph: John Mangan
COMPETITION among Fine Gael candidates in Clare has been welcomed by the Taoiseach with frustration bubbling beneath the surface over a map that is keeping certain parts of the county out of bounds.
Fine Gael’s three candidate ticket is comprised of Leonora Carey (FG), Cllr Joe Cooney (FG) and Dr Tom Nolan (FG).
Carey’s native of Clarecastle along with Newmarket-on-Fergus and Quin is kept sacrosanct for her with Cooney’s territory marked as Bodyke, O’Callaghans Mills and Kilkishen while Dr Nolan’s area of Kilrush, Kilkee and Miltown Malbay is not to be canvassed by his party colleagues.
Cllr Cooney admitted he was “disappointed” with the map that has kept him out of Quin, an area he has been elected to represent since it joined the Killaloe Municipal District in 2019.
He told The Clare Echo, “I didn’t know it when I come into the campaign, I hadn’t a clue about it, I did think there would be restrictions from where the different candidates came around their own area, but what was agreed only happened last week and there was a good bit of canvassing done before the agreements came in, we can’t do anything about that, the agreements are there now and we just move forward”.
Cooney added, “It is what it is, and we go with it end of story. We’d all love to have maybe the free run of the whole county, but that’s not the situation so we just work with what we have”.
An Taoiseach, Simon Harris (FG) upon hearing of Cooney’s disappointment, remarked, “I love when there’s a bit of competition going on between the candidates. When they’re when, you know, when they’re out there pounding the pavements and they’re saying, who can knock on this door and who can because you know what that shows me. It shows me the organisation is alive and kicking, and I’m really excited about that. We have three superb candidates with three very different backgrounds. Leonora, Joe, and Tom, I’m grateful to them all. I’m supporting all of them. I’m asking people in County Clare to go out and vote 1, 2, and 3, in order of their preference. And once it remains healthy, tension, which I think it is, that’s always a good thing”.
Indeed Cooney’s addition to the ticket after he had ruled himself out saw the party scramble to find an addition which saw Dr Nolan enter the field. On his reaction to the former Mayor of Clare’s reversal, he said, “Hand on heart, I was disappointed”.
Nolan continued, “I didn’t feel I was sold a deliberate pup. I think there are issues for the people who made the decision that that brought Joe Cooney back in, whether or not that was the right thing to do but I’m not going to comment really on whether this was good politically, good for Joe Cooney, or what the optics would look like but as you say, it does mean that I’ve been it does look like I’ve been used. From my perspective, I see it as I’ve been given an opportunity to accomplish something that I was not in a position to do three weeks ago, I’m taking that opportunity and I’m pushing the agenda to get this job done”.
Leonora refuted claims that the Carey camp put barriers in place to Fine Gael adding potential candidates over the past six months, “the opposite actually”. She said no meeting was sought with the party executive following the addition of her running mates. “I don’t know what my vote is because I’m out canvassing and out asking people to vote for me. From the night of my selection convention, what I want to do is maximise the Fine Gael vote, I’m delighted Joe Cooney and Tom Nolan are there with me to be able to work as a team, between the three of us as candidates we will appeal to different demographics to different people and we can maximise and grow the Fine Gael vote, what I’d really hope is that on the 29th of November we will have a really successful election and that we can at least elect two of us as TDs for Co Clare”.
