too impressed with the thoroughness of how every angle had been considered to object further. I’d just have to put up with the mirror effect of the screen and play my part as best I could. Happily, the event was a success.
The selection of candidates for the 2011 General Election would prove a bit more challenging for our team and was controversial for us in many locations. I had made it clear from early on that I wanted to contest every constituency, and to have more than one candidate in some. Unlike the situation with the local and European elections, there was no shortage of prospective candidates for the general election. Labour’s fortunes were on the rise and it was, in some respects, the jersey to wear at the time. I was approached by some high profile figures that were very keen to get on board. However, it soon became apparent that most had little interest in being TDs. They wanted to be ministers right away. One offered to run on condition that I assured him he would be Minister for Finance.
In constituencies where Labour was weak we did have to look outside the Party for candidates. In Roscommon-South Leitrim we selected Independent Councillor, John Kelly, from Ballaghadereen, and to support his candidacy we held the 2010 annual parliamentary party meeting in the Abbey Hotel in Roscommon town. Independent Councillor, Jimmy Harte, whose father Paddy had been a long-time Fine Gael TD for Donegal, came on board. The Harte family are greatly respected in Donegal, and I recall Pat Rabbitte returning from a constituency visit there enthused that the local media thought Jimmy would take a seat.
A young Independent candidate, barrister and farmer Michael McNamara, caught our eye during the 2009 European Elections. I met him in Ennis during the second Lisbon Referendum, and with the generous support of Councillor Pascal Fitzgerald, he overcame some local resistance to become our successful candidate in Clare. In Mayo, the local media speculated that Councillor Michael Kilcoyne, a trade union official and former member of the Labour Party, might re-join, and that if he did, he would win a seat for Labour. He probably would have, but it never happened, and I therefore asked former Independent TD, Dr Gerry Cowley, to stand for Labour. He joined us at the 2010 Conference in Galway.
Encouraged by Willie Penrose, we asked the former Progressive Democrat TD, Mae Sexton, whose family has deep roots in the local trade union movement, to stand in Longford. John Whelan, the former editor of the Leinster Leader, was recommended to us by some of his friends in the media. After some strong resistance in the local organisation, he was selected as our candidate for the five-seater Laois-Offaly constituency, resulting in unpleasant scenes at the selection convention in Portlaoise and several resignations from the Party.
The new candidate selection system gave the Party’s organisation committee the right to shortlist candidates, but ultimately the choice was made by the individual members at a constituency selection convention. Many of these conventions were very keenly contested.
In Wicklow, Liz McManus was retiring from the Dáil and she had hoped that her son Ronan, a councillor in Bray, would replace her. Instead, the convention selected Anne Ferris (Liz’s Dáil assistant) who went on to win a seat. She was joined on the Labour ticket by Councillor Conal Kavanagh (son of former Labour minister Liam), and with the Mayor of County Wicklow, Councillor Tom Fortune.
In Dublin South Central, Councillors Eric Byrne and Michael Conaghan (both of whom were elected) were selected along with Councillor Henry Upton (son of the late Deputy Pat Upton, and nephew of Deputy Mary Upton). I received several communications of protest from members who complained that three men had been selected over the very able Councillor Rebecca Moynihan. But that was the outcome of the vote at the selection convention. (I have no doubt that Rebecca will make it to the Dáil and be an outstanding TD).
The selection of Deputy Tommy Broughan and former Deputy Seán Kenny by the members in Dublin North Central caused disquiet among younger members of the Party, who had supported the cause of the young Councillor Cian O’Callaghan. In Dublin North West, Róisín Shortall resisted the candidacy of Councillor Andrew Montague (the man who was responsible for the Dublin Bike Scheme), and John Lyons was chosen. As it turned out, both Shortall and Lyons were elected in this three-seater. When Senator Ivana Bacik failed to win a nomination in her own constituency of Dublin South East (where Ruairí Quinn and Kevin Humphreys went on to win two seats), I invited her to stand as my running mate in Dun Laoghaire.
In Sligo-Leitrim, the contest for the nomination between European election candidate Susan O’Keeffe and Councillor Veronica Cawley ended in a draw. After hearing from both candidates, the National Executive called it in O’Keeffe’s favour. Cawley subsequently left the Party and stood as an Independent, as did two other former Labour representatives. The multiplicity of Labour and former Labour names on the ballot divided the vote and resulted in Sinn Féin taking the seat.
A number of strategic decisions were taken to add candidates who had not been through the selection conventions. Councillor Colm Keaveney from Tuam accepted that a second candidate, from the south of the county, would be needed if he were to have a realistic chance of winning in Galway East. He raised no objections to the addition of a young barrister, Lorraine Higgins from Athenry, who had been an Independent candidate in the 2009 Local Elections. Geography also dictated the necessity of adding a North Louth candidate to boost the chances of Drogheda-based Ged Nash. We nominated a well-known music teacher, Mary Moran from Dundalk. Deputy Brian O’Shea, who had been Chairperson of the Party, had decided not to seek re-election in Waterford. Local opinion polls suggested that Councillor Seamus Ryan was having difficulty picking up votes in the west of the county. We added a new young councillor from Dungarvan, Ciara Conway, who, remarkably, went on to outpoll Seamus and to take the seat.
Eventually, after careful preparations, Labour was set to contest the 2011 General Election in every constituency, with over seventy candidates in total, the highest number since 1969, and enough to become the largest party in the Dáil. We were offering the Irish people the choice of electing a Labour-led government for the first time ever. The ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ posters were intended to make that choice explicit; and in any event – according to the opinion polls – that was the people’s preference at that stage.
Meanwhile, we had been preparing our campaign. I had appointed Ruairí Quinn as the National Director of Elections to head a special committee composed of senior politicians and senior Party staff. The committee would run the campaign on a day-today basis. We rented an open-plan floor in a modern office building in Golden Lane (now the home of TheJournal.ie) as our election headquarters. Based on the policy preparation work undertaken by Colm O’Reardon and Jean O’Mahony, posters, pamphlets and policy documents were produced to a standard design under the banner slogan of ‘One Ireland: Jobs, Reform, Fairness’, which became the title of the election manifesto.
The manifesto, which ran to 90 pages, was drawn up at a time of turmoil in Ireland. I believed that it had to offer hope to people who were by now traumatised by the economic collapse, and who were fast losing confidence in politics.
I had lived through the economic crisis of the 1980s and had seen, at first hand, the devastating effect of losing a job on the individual worker, on his or her family, and on their community. What the new Government would have to face was worse than the 1980s. Recovery would not happen just by cutting budgets. It would have to be built on job creation. Our manifesto would spell out how that would be done by growing new jobs in tourism, in the food industry, in the green economy and through innovation. It would spell out how Ireland could increase its exports and support small businesses. Our priority would be creating jobs. But I also felt that re-building the broken economy was not enough. We also had to repair public life and politics. I asked Brendan Howlin to draw up a blueprint for reform and he produced 140 proposals for the reform of politics and the public service.
I also knew that budgets would have to be cut, but I believed that this needed to be done fairly. No cut would be painless and every cut would have consequences for somebody. But we needed to maintain a threshold of decency, a floor below which people could not be allowed to fall. That’s why we concentrated
