Libertas felt that excluding candidates and activists from process showed a lack of transparency, writes KATHY SHERIDANat the North West count centre in Castlebar, Co Mayo
BARELY 9.30AM and the potential High Court appeal was gestating nicely.
The boxes had been opened before candidates or activists were allowed in. Libertas was suspicious.
“If you can trace beef all the way back, why not our votes?” said John Browne, Dana’s brother and Libertas ally. Unarguably. So was he alleging dirty tricks?
“I wouldn’t call it that, but you have to consider the unique position of Declan Ganley. He’s virtually the only ‘No to Lisbon ’ candidate there.”
Ah. So you are alleging dirty tricks? “Everyone has acknowledged this isn’t normal procedure.”
Who exactly? “Fine Gael and Marian Harkin’s people . . .”
Whereupon a somewhat cross Harkin supporter suddenly cut in to say that anyone who wanted to hear what Marian Harkin had to say, should ask the woman herself.
Fine Gael had no problem with procedures at all, said FG’s Conor Cresham happily.
And Fianna Fáil politicians seemed quite absent (the genial Dara Colleary turned up later to represent the slightly diminished national movement).
But just to be sure, we checked with Libertas PR John McGuirk, when suddenly a very cross man barked: “No! There’s no problem”.
But John Browne said . . . “That’s speculation”, he snapped. Well, you can’t really say . . “I said it’s speculation”.
And who might you be? “Doesn’t matter who I am.”
He was Libertas’ head tally man as it turned out. Ganley himself was affecting a regal indifference. But there were intimations that the issue remained alive throughout the day.
John Browne said Ganley was “going to wait and see”. Come evening, Ganley remarked to Jim Higgins that there had been “no transparency” before planting a peck on the cheek of Higgins’s partner Noreen and telling her he’d see her in Brussels.
Ganley’s wife Delia showed up in a fetching sleeveless red dress and matching heels (“a bit over-styled,” sniffed a woman, “a bit hot,” sighed a man) and declared it was “red for confidence”.
We had heard that quietly, he was only 40 per cent confident but out loud, he was bullish. Nearby, a Harkin tallyman (the go-to tally folk for all parties and none) murmured that Ganley was coming fourth and “they would have to have 47 Masses said up the road in Knock tonight to change that”.
So will Ganley get out of the game if he loses?
“I said months ago I wouldn’t lead if I didn’t win a seat,” he corrected.
“But we’re not going to lose.” But just supposing? “It depends.”
That’s enigmatic. “I’m worried now,” said Delia. Depends on what? “On whether I’m provoked,” he said with a not entirely convincing laugh.
Meanwhile, the Independent extraordinaire Marian Harkin (who headed the poll when the announcement came at 9.40pm), arrived to a big round of applause from the famous Harkin machine.
As Jim Higgins came over to greet her, her eight-year-old nephew Jake looked up and gurgled: “Oh, he’s coming third!”
Harkin should have been giddy with triumph, but she is a serious woman with serious reservations about this campaign. And the quality of this one was different, she said.
“The negative campaigning from Libertas was not easy to deal with . . . by the time you had dealt with them, you’d allowed Declan Ganley to take centre stage and you hadn’t time to get on to your own agenda.”
We’re leaning against the count corral barriers when suddenly she protests: “Jim! Jim! Get away.” It’s only poor Jim Higgins moving in for a picture. Ah he’s not that bad, we say. “No, no, it’s not that . . . He just . . . creeps up on me. That’s the fourth time he’s done it.”
And indeed she had looked a tad discomfited when he’d attempted to kiss her from the side earlier.
Susan O’Keeffe, the journalist turned Labour MEP candidate – and who has serious issues with the “easy ride” given to Ganley by the media – anticipates the “emotional moment” that will come with her inevitable elimination today.
“I’ll have to deal with that when it comes,” she said, but it’s clearly not the last Irish politics will see of Susan O’Keeffe.
“I would like to have had a bigger vote. I never felt I would make it . . . We made our mountain a hard one to climb . . . But this is a longer battle. It’s about a Labour Party that can straddle voters throughout Ireland.”
Pat the Cope arrived around 8.15pm (still no sign of Paschal), after a three-week campaign the pace of which would have killed a horse.
It’s funny how things turn out. Months ago, his wife had suggested he join her and her sister for a short break at their house near Alicante and he hesitated, worried about finding someone to pair with him in the Dáil.
He has no such worries now.