Sir, – Is there a plot afoot to airbrush Brian Crowley, the Fianna Fáil MEP for the South constituency, out of history? I refer to the recent article "Martin rules out future coalition with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin" (Oireachtas Report, June 13th).
According to this report, a “four-hour meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party was called to discuss the fallout from the local and European elections, which saw the party become the largest political force on local authorities but fail to win a seat in the European Parliament”.
In the recent European elections, Brian Crowley was comfortably elected on the first count to represent the South constituency with a vote that exceeded the quota by 37 per cent.
An effective vote-management strategy would probably have guaranteed the party two seats in this constituency. If I had any involvement with the Fianna Fáil party, I suppose that I too would feel pretty sore if such a strategy had been implemented and failed dismally, or if a vote management exercise had not even been attempted in the first place. – Yours, etc,
PAUL GULLY,
St Lawrence’s Road,
Clontarf, Dublin 3.