Musical chairs in Donegal North East?

Interesting developments, or rather non developments in the Fianna Fail Donegal North East story. According to Highland Radio there were ructions at a constituency meeting on Sunday night when the co-option of Niall Blaney, and the Independent Fianna Fail organisation into the mainstream party. A planned press conference for Blaney yesterday was cancelled, presumably because Sunday’s meeting could not arrive at a concrete decision.

Behind the scenes the machinations continue. There have been years of aninmosity between Independent Fianna Fail (a Donegal only organisation) and the local party machine, set in train by Niall’s uncle Neil T Blaney in response to Jack Lynch’s censure over his role in the Arms Crisis.
But this mini-crisis is primarily a question of how many Dail seats seats the party is likely to bag. Blaney has voted with the government party for the last nine years, so his coming in-house makes no practical difference to the government’s working majority

Indeed the Donegal Democrat today is tipping Jim McDaid to rescind his promised resignation and run if Blaney joins the Fianna Fail fold to protect what some insiders see as a vulnerablity in the Letterkenny area. The party’s Inishowen based TD Cecilia Keaveney, told RTE at lunchtime that she’d have no problems with Blaney joining the party ticket. Indeed, her own father Paddy was a former stalwart of the IFF.

Update: Ciaran O’Donnell with more background.