PERHAPS IT is because, ahem, Fianna Fáil doesn’t have a candidate in the presidential election (no laughing down the back, please), but the party seems much more energised than its main rivals in the Dublin West byelection. It is pushing its young candidate David McGuinness with great purpose.
Party leader Micheál Martin has been in the constituency on a number of occasions while the campaign team has been coming up with all manner of wheezes to get its man noticed.
Fresh from telling us he is a virtuoso on the trombone, we now hear that the schoolteacher sponsors his local football club, Corduff FC, and has his name emblazoned on the players’ jerseys. The resourceful McGuinness has also printed posters reprising the famous PD one which persuaded voters to put Michael McDowell and his party into a coalition with Fianna Fáil in 2002.
It said: “Single Party Government? No Thanks.”
The new FF version for Dublin Mid West reads “Another Silent Government Backbencher? No thanks.”
Full marks for trying . . .
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