SELECTION PROCESS:EAMON GILMORE predicted that Labour would be fighting strongly to win a seat in the South constituency in the European parliament elections following the selection at the weekend of Tipperary Senator Alan Kelly as the party's standard bearer.
Mr Kelly (33), from Portroe in north Tipperary, defeated his rival, Arthur Spring (31), nephew of former Labour leader, Dick Spring, by 276 votes to 144 votes at the party's selection convention at the Silver Springs hotel in Cork.
There had been speculation prior to the convention that it might prove an acrimonious contest because of attempts by the Spring camp to register over 200 members from Kerry who had not paid their membership dues.
In the event however, the convention, which was chaired by Deputy Róisín Shortall, was an amicable affair with Mr Spring pledging his support to Mr Kelly after the contest.
Many party members had expected a turnout of over 500 voters, but it transpired that 420 or just 31.12 per cent of the 1,346 party members registered to vote in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, Limerick and Waterford did so, with Mr Kelly winning 65.7 per cent to Mr Spring's 34.28.
The final result was predicted from early in the convention from the numbers of delegates registered from each county with provisional figures showing that some 151 members from the five Cork constituencies voted, while 106 party members from the two Tipperary constituencies voted.
Some 95 members from the two Kerry constituencies voted, followed by 48 members from the two Limerick constituencies, with just 18 party members from Waterford coming to Cork to cast their ballot in the selection convention.
With Mr Kelly expected to pick up all the Tipperary votes, as well as most of the Limerick votes and a majority of the Cork votes where he knew many party members from living and working there for over eight years, Mr Spring was left with an uphill struggle to secure the party nomination.
Despite the relatively low turnout, both Mr Gilmore and Mr Kelly were upbeat about the party's chances of taking a seat in the European election. The Labour Party has not held a seat for over two decades since the late Seán Treacy in the 1980s.
"We've selected a very good candidate in Alan Kelly who is determined to win the seat for us - we want to win the seat so we decided to have our candidate in the field early so we would be in a position to organise a campaign around him," said Mr Gilmore.
"The Labour Party has held a seat in Munster before, but it's going to be difficult - it's a three seat constituency and it's always difficult for the Labour Party to win in three seaters, but we have an organisation and representation in every part of the constituency and we're going to build on that." He added that media reports of a rift between Mr Spring and the Labour Party leadership were "wide of the mark", but he conceded that the controversy had helped raise the profile of both Mr Kelly and Mr Spring, whom he predicted would represent the Labour Party in the Dáil very soon.
A former e-business manager up until his election on the Agricultural Panel of the Senate in 2007, Mr Kelly thanked delegates for selecting him and said he was a passionate supporter of the European Union, but he did have some concerns about the direction in which the EU was developing.
He said he was opposed to building a federal European state and while Ireland should play its part through co-operating on security and foreign policy, Irish neutrality must also be respected and the triple-lock mechanism must remain in place.
Mr Kelly said the Labour Party must also fight any "race to the bottom" regarding workers' rights on foot of the Laval judgment in the European Court of Justice, while he warned that the Mandelson proposals at the WTO talks would devastate Irish agriculture.