A Kilkenny city TD has hit back at a call by the chief executive of Carlow Chamber of Commerce for voters in that county to support Carlow politicians in the next election.
Mr John McGuinness said the call, by Mr Gerry Dunne, reflected a narrow, "parish-pump" view of the world.
In a "wake-up call" to the people of Carlow, Mr Dunne said in this page last week that the county had not been well served by politicians from Kilkenny. The Carlow-Kilkenny constituency currently has four TDs from the larger county and one from Carlow.
In a strong response yesterday, Mr McGuinness said if Carlow was being neglected, which he did not accept, it was because some individuals and organisations within that county's political and commercial establishment were "sticking their heads in the sand and not facing reality".
"These people could moan for Carlow in the Olympics. They moaned when a Carlow man was elected a Government TD, about Carlow being overlooked and neglected. They are moaning now and they will surely moan in the future.
"But they are not doing the job for the people of Carlow. They are not giving leadership; they are not co-operating with me; they are not being positive."
Mr McGuinness said he had made it clear on many occasions that he would do anything he could to help Carlow, "yet those who complain most about me have not taken up that offer". They were now trying to pull him down "by waving an empty county jersey".
The Fianna Fail backbencher was elected to the Dail for the first time in 1997 when he won a seat at the expense of his Carlow-based party colleague, Mr M.J. Nolan.
Although Mr Dunne did not mention names last week, his comments were interpreted by some as a call for voters to back Mr Nolan on the next occasion.
Mr McGuinness said, however, that a lot of people in Carlow knew and respected the work he was doing.
He claimed Mr Dunne had forgotten that TDs were elected primarily to serve the country. "He not only assumes they will be biased, he requires them to be biased . . . That attitude has been a destructive, retarding influence in Irish politics for generations."