Firebomb added heat to Mulherin maelstrom

AT THE SCENE?Gardaí and the Fire Services pictured at Michelle Mulherin’s constituency office in Ballina last Tuesday evening.?Pic: Corinne Beattie

Firebomb added heat to Mulherin maelstrom


Áine Ryan

WHETHER Michelle Mulherin remains a TD after next year’s general election is a matter of speculation, but there is one certainty: Some of the headlines she has created during her tenure in the 31st DΡil will go down in the political annals as among the more colourful.
Just as the embattled Ballina TD undoubtedly hoped the maelstrom over her costly calls to Kenya from the Oireachtas had been put to bed, her constituency office was firebombed last Tuesday night. The explosive incident occurred just hours after she paid the €2,000 owed for calls made to the mobile phone of her friend, Danson Kole, in Kenya.  
Responding in a statement yesterday (Monday), Ms Mulherin said: “I was shocked at what happened. It was upsetting, but thankfully nobody was injured. I await the outcome of the Garda investigation.
“I do want to thank people locally who have expressed their support after what happened. I am extremely grateful for the top-class work of the men and women of the local gardaí and fire services in dealing with the situation.”

Arrest made
Reportedly, the damage to her office at Casement Street, Ballina, caused by a flammable liquid thrown through a ground-floor window, was minor. Gardaí and several units of Ballina Fire Brigade attended the scene and the fire was extinguished quickly. A local man in his 30s has assisted gardaí with their investigation, and a file will be sent to the DPP.  
With regard to the phone bill, Ms Mulherin’s statement also confirmed that she had ‘refunded the Oireachtas the cost of the calls’. The calls were first brought into the public domain by RTÉ and followed-up by The Sunday Times, which identified Ms Mulherin as the caller. She claimed the calls related to Mr Kole being maligned in an unnamed newspaper because of his association with her.
Deputy Mulherin became involved in a media storm in 2012 after a DΡil debate on abortion, when she used the archaic term of ‘fornication’ (consensual sex between two unmarried people), citing it as the biggest cause of unwanted pregnancy.
 
Boundary blues
A local solicitor, Michelle Mulherin was first elected to Ballina Town Council in 1999 and to Mayo County Council in 2004. She won the third seat in General Election 2011 in the ‘blue tsunami’ that returned an unprecedented four Fine Gael TDs to the constituency. With one seat less next time around, due to the redrawing of constituency boundaries, Mulherin could be fighting to retain her position.
Leading NUI Maynooth expert Dr Adrian Kavanagh has said that Fine Gael is unlikely to repeat its record of 2011 and that it may only have two safe seats in the reconfigured constituency – the potential losers being Michelle Mulherin and John O’Mahony.