SINN FÉ IN:SINN FÉIN plans to build on its relative success in the presidential campaign by targeting a significant boost in representation in the local elections in 2014.
The 13.7 per cent vote for the Sinn Féin candidate, Martin McGuinness, represents the highest national vote for the party in modern times. With more than 243,000 votes, Mr McGuinness significantly outpolled Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell and ended up a comfortable third on first preference votes.
He also passed the 12.5 per cent threshold required for the reimbursement of expenses.
There will be some disappointment in the party that Mr McGuinness failed to match his figures in some opinion polls, which predicted a vote of up to 19 per cent. The party also failed to feature in the Dublin West byelection, though that was not unexpected.
Mr McGuinness, accompanied by his wife Bernadette Canning and some of his four children, was the first of the candidates to arrive at the count centre in Dublin Castle last night. He told reporters he was “over the moon” at his performance and vowed that Sinn Féin would continue to build on its good result in the presidential election in the future.
“We’re in the mainstream of political life north and south of the Border. We’re going to continue to work away incrementally to ensure that the politics that we espouse continues to bring change for people within society, particularly at a time of huge economic distress.”
He said it was clear that his brand of republicanism was here to stay in the mainstream of political life, not just in the North but increasingly south of the Border also. Sinn Féin was now operating effectively as the Opposition to the Government in defence of the interests of the most marginalised in society, he claimed.
Gracious in acknowledging defeat to the Labour candidate, he declared that he was very happy that Michael D Higgins would be “waking up in the Áras” next month. “What’s done is done and what’s won is won and Michael D has won it and I fully congratulate him. I think he’ll make a great president and he’ll be my president also.” He said he had earlier spoken by telephone to the victorious candidate and wished him “my warmest congratulations”.
Describing the campaign as an eye-opener, he defended his intervention in the Frontline television debate on Monday, in particular his revelation about Independent candidate and frontrunner Seán Gallagher’s involvement in a Fianna Fáil fundraiser in Dundalk in 2008. Mr McGuinness’s claim that Mr Gallagher collected a €5,000 donation for Fianna Fáil from a businessman who attended the function is seen as key factor behind the collapse in Mr Gallagher’s support in the final days of the campaign.
The debate would go into the annals of television and political history, he said, but the result was that Mr Higgins was elected and he was happy with that. However, the questions he asked were legitimate ones: “I do have a concern about gombeenism, cronyism and the brown envelope culture which helped to destroy Irish economy and put most marginalised into extreme difficulty and I have no regrets about that.”