EUROPEAN ELECTIONS:TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has insisted Fianna Fáil is still in with a fighting chance of holding its seat in Dublin in the European Parliament elections despite Eoin Ryan suffering a 2 per cent drop in support in the latest Irish TimesTNS/mrbi opinion poll.
Mr Cowen said there were still several days to go before polling on June 5th and he believed that Eoin Ryan who was on 9 per cent and his running mate, Eibhlin Byrne, who was on 5 per cent, would continue to win support right up until polls close.
‘‘In the European Parliament elections, we’re still working hard right across the constituencies and in Dublin, we have Eoin Ryan and Eibhlin Byrne who are going to keep going right up until the end so we’re going to keep fighting for every vote.’’
‘‘At the end of the day, it’s on the 5th of June that these decisions are made by the people and our job during the campaigns is to put our positive agenda across and that’s what we are doing and I think the organisation is in great heart,’’ Mr Cowen said.
Speaking on Saturday during a visit to Youghal in East Cork where he was accompanied by Munster Euro hopeful, Ned O’Keeffe, Mr Cowen dismissed the 2 per cent increase in support for Socialist Party candidate Joe Higgins in Dublin in the latest poll.
Mr Higgins received 9 per cent support while Mary Lou McDonald (SF) received 11 per cent, Patricia McKenna received 5 per cent, Deidre de Burca received 6 per cent and Proinsias De Rossa of Labour received 25 per cent.
Mr Cowen dismissed suggestions that the poll showed a move to the left in Dublin. He rejected the view voters might see Fianna Fáil as being too close to the banks and that the party should consider a move to the left.
‘‘No. I think what it (the poll) shows is that there’s a context out there and there’s a very tight race and Fianna Fáil is in there with a shout for the third seat and we’re going to work very hard in the next seven days to try and retain it.’’
Mr Cowen struck a defiant note over Dublin byelections, despite the level of support for Fianna Fáil in Dublin in both the European (14 per cent) and the local election (10 per cent) opinion polls suggesting they will lose both.
‘‘We have two excellent candidates. We have Maurice Ahern in Dublin Central and we have Shay Brennan, son of the late Seamus Brennan in Dublin South, they are canvassing very hard, working very well.
‘‘Transfers obviously are very important and both (candidates) I believe have a broad appeal that will attract not only first preference votes but preference votes from those who may have other candidates preferred in the first instance,’’ he noted.
Asked whether he believed Fianna Fáil might benefit from a large surge of support as they did in the 2007 general election, Mr Cowen stressed that its candidates in the local elections were standing on a record of considerable achievement.
‘‘There’s a lot of activity going on throughout the country and there’s a lot of organisational cover throughout the country by this party and I say again, we have candidates of excellent calibre and capacity.”