Bobby Molloy's constituency colleague Eamon Ó Cuiv shares his view that the PD junior minister was done down by 'parish pump politics gonemad', reports Lorna Siggins
Connemara is the heartland of Galway West. It can take up to two hours to travel from the more remote parts of the bog, rock and sea-strewn landscape to the "city", and the TDs who have served this area for years know its geography and its isolation intimately.
No more so than Robert Molloy, fondly known as Iosagain, the fluent Irish speaker who has spent countless Saturdays in his 37 years in politics holding clinics for his constituents in the area.
"Delivering for Galway" reads the most recent advertisement in local newspapers, detailing the clinic times in the Imperial Hotel in Eyre Square, in O'Malley's in Clifden and in Keoghs of Oughterard.
Many's the day the clinics would run late, but "this man would never turn away anyone who came to see him", say some of his party supporters. Had the courageous 23-year-old woman who was the victim of her father's repeated sexual abuse come to him for help, she would have received very sympathetic treatment, they say.
Or had her mother - whose horrific story of domestic violence, and ostracisation out in Camus was outlined in the first person on RTÉ Radio yesterday. Long separated from her husband, she experienced severe economic hardship and her five children were "scattered to the winds" over the attacks on her and on her daughter.
It was the testimony of one son who returned from England which was crucial to the final verdict in the trial.
Mr Molloy yesterday issued a very firm denial - and party colleagues locally back this up - of any links with the convicted rapist or his sister, before he first met Anne Naughton as a constituent last year.
"Bobby had a system, and it was one that got him into trouble in this case," said a close confidant who did not wish to be named but who felt deeply aggrieved at the way Mr Molloy was being "beheaded" by the Opposition.
IT was his popularity in Connemara, and that of Galway West junior Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv, that led to the fateful visits, they say - as does Minister Ó Cuiv. He confirmed to this newspaper earlier this week that he had had several meetings with Ms Naughton in his Department of Agriculture office in Dublin last year.
Mr Ó Cuiv recalls that he told her he could not interfere in such a matter. He says he spoke to her at length about the separation of powers between the Oireachtas and the judiciary.
Coming from a Fianna Fáil background, Mr Molloy ran the system in his constituency as he had always done, and Mr Ó Cuiv says he understands how an error of judgment could have occurred.
Reared in Dublin and relocated to the west, where he ran a co-op, Mr Ó Cuiv probably understands the cultural differences between east and west, particularly in relation to politicians, better than most.
"If I went to Mr Molloy and asked him to get me a grant to build a bridge over the widest part of the Corrib, he'd write to the Department of the Environment - instead of telling me this was nonsense.
"I'd often have people come to me - and I see hundreds every week and receive large volumes of correspondence from constituents - about headage payments or social welfare. I'd try and sort it out at local level. But a lot of people want you to go to the Minister and don't want to hear anything else," Mr Ó Cuiv says.
"You'd know this could be about a matter that was a dead duck, but you'd get your secretary to talk to the official in the relevant department and ask for it in writing. Sometimes it can be the only way to get people off your back."
It is a view echoed by others, such as gardaí, who are used to representations being made about offences such as drink-driving.
"In the west of Ireland, it tends to be more frequent," one Garda source said.
The pressure on the health system is such that constituents often ask politicians to lobby for appointments with consultants, and TDs regularly make contact with consultants on their behalf.
Mr Ó Cuiv stresses that the normal reaction of a politician is "to never leave a letter unanswered, even if you are only getting acknowledgements back from a relevant department - sometimes about serious matters involving the state of schools and suchlike."
H E also believes that Mr Molloy's own description of the current controversy - "parish pump politics gone mad" - is the most appropriate that he has heard.
"In this case, Bobby Molloy took the lazy man's route. He wrote on each occasion to the department to get an answer for his constituent, but there were only "three letters of any significance", Mr Ó Cuiv notes.
"I could make that same error," he said yesterday. "In this case, I made the right call."