Last Refuge default
THE CLEAR desire of Simon Harris to add Kate O’Connell as a ‘partner’ to councillor James Geoghegan on the Dublin Bay South (DBS) general election ticket is going to upset a number of Fine Gael members and their political calculations. The primary person to be discommoded is Geoghegan, scion of the most distinguished legal family in the state, who has shed the lustre that surrounded him before he bombed at the DBS by-election in 2021, losing to Labour’s Ivana Bacik in a constituency previously known as Blue Heaven.
The talk will be of Kate and Simon going for two seats in Sir Garret FitzGerald’s old area but the world knows that one seat is the best FG can reasonably target here. Worse, it could well be that Kate, not James, is the one who will take the seat, especially as many women who voted for Bacik and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan may be looking for an assertive woman to support next time out.
Others who will resent the imposition of the garrulous O’Connell on their patch are the DBS members who have to knock on doors and canvass for their candidate(s). The notion that Leo Varadkar was the one who blocked Kate’s triumphant return to save the DBS Blueshirt seat is only half true. Many party members in DBS have neither forgotten nor forgiven the impertinent culchie who gave cheek to her ‘betters’ in the party in the not-so-recent past. However, if Simon and HQ add on Kate O’Connell, there is nothing the membership fodder can do about it.
Spare a thought also for councillor Emma Blain, who had expected to be the added candidate. Blain left her local council area – Glencullen-Sandyford – in the Dáil constituency of Dublin Rathdown to run in the local electoral area of Pembroke in the Dublin City Council area. Now that the wind is blowing in Kate’s favour, Emma can hardly pack her bags and return to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county council.
Nor can Blain take advantage of Josepha Madigan’s exit from politics to step into the Dáil constituency of Dublin Rathdown (it goes from three seats to four at the general election) as originally intended. This is because councillor Maeve O’Connell is now seen as Madigan’s likely replacement in this constituency.
