FINE Gael will choose candidates to contest the general election in Wicklow within a fortnight in the wake of yesterday's announcement by its sitting deputy, Mr Godfrey Timmins, that he will not contest the election.
Mr Timmins, who will be 70 this year, announced his retirement yesterday, 29 years after he first entered the Dail in a by election.
Based in west Wicklow, he held the seat continuously since 1968 apart from a brief period from 1987 to 1989. Mr Timmins is the 17th sitting TD to announce he will not contest the next general election.
The deeply divided Wicklow Fine Gael organisation will now face into the next election without a sitting TD on the party ticket. The organisation has never recovered from the disarray into which it was thrown by the imposition of Senator Shane Ross on the party ticket in Wicklow for the 1991 local elections and the 1992 general election.
Dozens of party activists and a number of Fine Gael local authority members left the party in protest. Mr Ross was elected to Wicklow County Council but performed poorly in the 1992 election.
Councillor Tom Honan was selected as the party candidate in the 1995 by election, which was won by the Independent candidate, Ms Mildred Fox. Mr Ross left Fine Gael last week.
The party performed poorly in the 1995 by election, winning just 13 per cent of the vote - a share that might not be enough to give it just one seat in a general election.
This contrasts with the period in the 1980s when the party held two seats in the constituency through Mr Timmins and Ms Gemma Hussey.
There is no obvious high profile local Fine Gael candidate, and the arrival of an outside candidate has not been ruled out.
The divisive experience of the imposition of Mr Ross, however, may make the party leadership slow to repeat such a manoeuvre.
There is speculation now that Councillor George Jones, one of those who left the party at the time of Mr Ross's imposition, may rejoin the party and be selected for the party ticket.