Parties know being 'nice' to SF is vital for transfers

By-elections: Every political party is attacking Sinn Féin nationally, but few are doing so in Meath, writes Mark Hennessy , …

By-elections: Every political party is attacking Sinn Féin nationally, but few are doing so in Meath, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent.

Sinn Féin's Cllr Joe Reilly may not win the Meath by-election next month, but his transfers may well decide who does.

On Thursday, the Navan-based councillor appeared with other candidates on an election debate on the popular local radio station, LMFM.

"Everybody was very nice to me. Bar giving me bouquets they could not have been nicer," Cllr Reilly joked yesterday.

READ MORE

It is easy to see why. Over the last decade he has built up the party's share of the vote to 6,000 from a paltry 641 in 1992. Yesterday he canvassed voters in Navan Shopping Centre, alongside the party's Derry-based chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin.

Happily greeting locals, Cllr Reilly is a natural canvasser, but Mr McLaughlin, a man who seems more comfortable in a committee room surrounded by documents, is less so. The young women running the ice-cream stand were in no mood for one-way traffic, however. A canvass was worth an ice cream, one of them told Cllr Reilly.

Though a few people passed by with pursed lips, refusing Sinn Féin canvassers' literature, most were content to accept it, even if they were more interested in finishing their shopping.

"The media is not reflecting what is happening on the ground. The media expects Sinn Féin to be met with hostility on the door. It isn't happening," Cllr Reilly said. "The people who were anti-Sinn Féin before all of this are more so. What we have to do now is reach out to the middle ground," he declared.

Sinn Féin's Newry and Armagh Westminster candidate, Mr Conor Murphy, had travelled south to help the canvass, joined by his son, Óisín. "He is off for the week from school. The wife is away for a week at a conference. He is used to this," said Mr Murphy, a member of the suspended Northern Assembly.

So, too, was Mr Breandán MacCionnaith, who was once a "regular" on television in the days when Garvaghy Road and Portadown made headlines.

Though events elsewhere may have hurt Sinn Féin, the withdrawal of Cllr Tommy Reilly from the Fianna Fáil ticket could help Sinn Féin in Navan, at least. "There is sympathy here for Tommy amongst Fianna Fáil voters. Some of them are not happy with the way the Progressive Democrats are driving things," he said.

In the 1980s, Cllr Reilly served time for IRA membership, an issue brought back into the headlines last weekend by Ireland on Sunday. "Everybody knew it around here. They know what they are getting. What you see is what you get," said Cllr Reilly, who, even according to his political enemies, works hard on community issues.

One of these issues raised its head at the centre's main door where Cllr Reilly spoke to four women. "One of those women won't go back to her home in Ashbrook on the Clogherboy estate in the town because of the intimidation that is going on there," he said.

Last weekend, gardaí were called to the estate to deal with a serious disturbance, which Cllr Reilly and others blame on one family. "The council has done nothing. There's havoc up there. I don't want people beaten up, or anything like that. That doesn't work. But there has to be a code. People should be evicted for behaving like that," he said.