Thursday, October 8, 2009

O'Donoghue V Healy-Rae


Down in Cahersiveen, you would be hard pressed to find anyone to say a bad word about John O’Donoghue.

Some feel he has been scapegoated for the excess of others but some others are not that sympathetic.

So it was hardly surprising to hear his constituency ‘colleague’ Jackie Healy-Rae say that O’Donoghue ‘got himself into this mess’ and would ‘get himself out of it’.

The Healy-Rae ‘party’ is really Fianna Fail but by another name. However that doesn’t stop them from chomping at the bit at the thought of an open fight come the next general election.

The perk of the job of Ceann Comhairle is that you don’t have to fight the next general election - you are automatically re-elected.

In South Kerry, that would have meant a fight for just two seats currently held by Healy-Rae Snr and Fine Gael’s Tom Sheahan.

But with a strong Fianna Fail vote there, that would make the Healy-Rae seat somewhat vulnerable if a decent Fianna Fail candidate entered the mix.

However, with an open fight, the Healy-Raes would be most likely to hang onto their seat and this would see the Kilgarvan torch being passed on to Michael Healy-Rae.

There is no love lost between the Healy-Rae and O’Donoghue camps - that is an open secret.

So to paraphrase London Mayor Boris Johnson - ‘one man’s disaster is another man’s opportunity’.

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