Higgins still on course for European elections

Fine Gael deny tensions as Higgins still on course for European election


Áine Ryan
aineryan@mayonews.ie

FINE Gael MEP Jim Higgins has rubbished claims that there are any tensions within the party about who will be on the ticket in the North West constituency in next year’s European Parliament elections. Mr Higgins told The Mayo News yesterday that he was hopeful of polling at the same high level of 80,000 votes in the election while his friend John O’Mahony TD would not be replacing him on the ticket.
He thus scuppered speculation in an Irish Independent front-page story yesterday in which FionnΡn Sheahan, its Political Editor, claimed that eight months before polling for the European elections tensions were already emerging within the Fine Gael party about what candidates will be on the ticket in the Taoiseach’s back-yard.
With an expanding European Union area, Ireland is set to lose one of its representative at the European Parliament, leaving the country with eleven instead of 12 MEPs.
The article, which claims ‘the jockeying for position’ is already causing the Taoiseach headaches in Mayo, states that the party’s sitting MEP Jim Higgins, a long-time ally of Mr Kenny’s, ‘is fighting a rear-guard action to stay on the ticket and keep his seat’.
Continuing, it says Mr Higgins has proposed ‘a bizarre redraw of the European elections map that would keep party colleague Mairéad McGuinness out of his base’. Mr Sheahan also claims that the Fine Gael hierarchy want Higgins to stand aside in favour of sitting TD John O’Mahony.
“He wants to run, so it’ll be hard to get him off the pitch,” a senior party source told the Independent.
The new European constituency map will not be announced until the end of September, but Fine Gael is due to finalise its proposals for the independent Constituency Commission by the end of this week. Draft Fine Gael plans for the constituency redraw push MaireΡd McGuinness’s stronghold in Louth-Meath into an enlarged Ireland North-West constituency.  However, a submission made by Mr Higgins is at odds with his party’s proposal and aims to push McGuinness south. Tellingly, Fine Gael sources, as well as leading political geographer, Dr Adrian Kavanagh of NUI Maynooth, say that any proposals to put Meath and Louth in a constituency with Kerry don’t make sense.   
Instead, experts say the most likely option for the recarving of Leinster is that the top-half goes into Ireland North West and the bottom half into Ireland South, which is made up of Munster.
Explaining the rationale for his submission yesterday, Jim Higgins said he was simply trying to ensure that all four Fine Gael seats would be held.
“There is no problem if MaireΡd McGuinness and SeΡn Kelly [sitting Fine Gael MEPs] are competing in a proposed five-seat South East Ireland, which would extend from Louth to Kerry, because they would just divide it up between them for canvassing and would both hold on to their seats’.

Constituency cut
THE whole issue is compounded by the fact that Mayo is set to lose one seat in national elections, which means that Fine Gael will most likely lose at least one of its four seats presently held in the constituency. Various reports have suggested that Party strategists are considering moving O’Mahony to the Galway West constituency or running him as a candidate for Europe. However, Mr O’Mahony is a friend of Jim Higgins and may decline to make such a move.
This was firmly confirmed yesterday by Mr Higgins who told The Mayo News that he worked at a close level with O’Mahony on the ground in Mayo.
“I was the one who first approached John O’Mahony to enter politics. We are friends, and I am confident he will hold on to his seat at the next General Election,” Jim Higgins said.  
And Deputy John O’Mahony confirmed this last night.
“I am a close working friend of Jim Higgins’s, and indeed he sometimes uses my constituency office here in Claremorris for clinics. There is no vacancy at the moment, and I have no plans to seek a nomination for Europe while my colleague Jim Higgins is on the ticket. My full focus at the moment is on representing the people of Mayo in the DΡil,” John O’Mahony said. 

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