Hundreds of people attended a protest against the closure of emergency services at Roscommon County Hospital, organised by Boyle Town Council yesterday but only four of the nine council members were there.
The mayor of Boyle accused her Fine Gael colleagues of having turned their backs on the people after some of them expressed concern about the tactics used against local Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan in this campaign.
Sinn Fein councillor Jane Suffin who erected a giant placard outside the constituency office of the Boyle-based TD on the eve of the protest, calling on him to "resign now", denied abusing the TD.
Mr Feighan who is abroad, said his mother lived over the office and that the placard had upset his family. He said he accepted people's right to protest but said some of the treatment he had received since voting with the Government on the hospital issue had been "particularly nasty" and he believed some people had used the issue "for their own political gain".
An estimated 250 people attended the demonstration. Cllr Suffin said Fine Gael councillors may have been backing Mr Feighan but "should be backing the people who voted for them".
She denied she had abused the Fine Gael TD "by saying what I thought out straight" . The mayor has apologised for the strong language but not the sentiments she expressed recently on her Facebook page about Mr Feighan and people who had not supported a previous hospital protest in Boyle.