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McDowell gets bitchy with Fine Gael
Read more about: Fine Gael, Louth
McDowell lays into Fine Gael. Many of his points have been raised here on Irish Election, maybe he reads us. If so, how ya doing Michael. However one point he raises that caught my eye was this:
Fine Gael may take comfort from Mairead McGuinness returning from Brussels to contest a Dáil election. But such a decision may be taken more in the hope of succeeding Enda Kenny as party leader than of serving him as a minister.
It does seem very plausible if Fine Gael don’t get into power. Is Mairead the best chance of Fine Gael winning in 2012?
What he means is that he was elected on the basis of being the government’s watchdog and in his words people have found that the meat in the sandwich was in fact gone off at the time of purchase. Basically, he realises that unless he talks up the chances of FF then they and the PDs won’t have the numbers to do a deal and it would be FF and Labour. Fact is that Labour and FF could do a deal now on the basis of numbers and it would all be nice and cosy. However, they won’t because Labour know that the ebbing of the spring tide would be as nothing compared to the kick the public would give them if they were to go in with FF after the election. Fact is that during the lifetime of such a government SF would build up and pick off a good number of their seats and FG would take a few more and it would be the end of the Labour party for a generation.
Oddly enough he also talks of SF ‘just short of 10%’ when they were, last time I looked, at 8%. No wonder Cowen’s won’t tell him what is happening with the budget.
I also note his comment about the amnesty ‘The amnesty yielded over 1000 weapons, of which over 800 were firearms. A key feature of the amnesty was that persons could be pursued in relation to offences the weapons may have been used in.’ We look forward to those prosecutions. I wonder how many there will be for offenses from the civil war. Will the lady who handed in her gun from the GPO be done for sedition?