VOTING STRATEGY:A FINE GAEL candidate in Dublin South East has said his campaign team "ignored" advice sent by his director of elections that voters should be urged to give transfers to a named Independent candidate.
Eoghan Murphy was responding after it emerged that Paddy Hayes, the party’s director of elections in the constituency, issued advice that voters should be instructed not to give preferences to either Labour or Fianna Fáil.
Paddy Hayes e-mailed Fine Gael activists to say that economist Paul Sommerville was seen as “closest to the party in terms of policy and thinking”.
“We think that it is the FG party’s best interests not to encourage support for either Labour or Fianna Fáil,” Mr Hayes wrote.
Mr Murphy was questioned about the e-mail on Newstalk's Breakfastprogramme yesterday.
Asked about Fine Gael’s instruction that canvassers should tell voters not to transfer to Labour or Fianna Fáil, Mr Murphy first responded: “Fine Gael aren’t saying that.”
But when Mr Sommerville, also a guest on the programme, mentioned the e-mail, Mr Murphy said it had not come “from Fine Gael necessarily” but from the director of elections. “It was a bad judgment call. He shouldn’t have sent it.” Asked if he disagreed with his director of elections, he said: “Yes I do. Our campaign team ignored that.”
Mr Murphy said his team was out to get votes for him and for his running mate, Lucinda Creighton. After that, they were asking people to continue their preferences for the person they thought would best represent the area.