A constituency colleague of Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said he is being treated as a "movable feast" to ensure Fine Gael complies with gender quota legislation.

Mayo TD John O’Mahony, the former All-Ireland-winning football manager, has been asked by Fine Gael headquarters to transfer to Galway West ahead of the general election.

The party currently holds four of the five seats in Mayo, where it is also represented by Minister of State for Sport Michael Ring in Westport and Michelle Mulherin in Ballina.

However, the total number of seats in the constituency has been reduced to four and a swathe of Mr O’Mahony’s area in the south was lost to Galway in boundary revisions.

“I’m being used as the movable feast because of gender quotas. I’d expect I’m not the only one around the country in the same situation,” Mr O’Mahony said. “There’ll be a number of male TDs that will be, if you like, movable feasts. In other words, male sitting TDs, and that’s the case for me as well. Now maybe others would argue it could be location as well, but certainly a dynamic in it is the gender quota.”

Financial penalties

Mr O’Mahony said he hoped to run again. He was consulting widely “and working closely with the party on it” and would announce his decision shortly.

All political parties will have to implement a 30 per cent gender quota for candidates or face severe financial penalties. State funding for parties will be cut by half unless at least 30 per cent of candidates put forward are women.

A senior party source stressed Ms Mulherin’s strength in her Ballina base and contrasted it with the loss of a population of more than 10,000 from Mr O’Mahony’s area to Galway, while anticipating widespread problems with gender quotas.

“You can’t run four TDs for four seats. Somebody has to go. Kenny as leader can’t be seen to have no woman running in the constituency. The gender balance thing is going to cause them a lot of trouble at conventions all over the country.”

Galway West will remain a five-seater where a four-candidate strategy was recommended in a recent constituency committee report prepared for Fine Gael’s national executive.

The sitting TDs are Seán Kyne and Brian Walsh, while Senator Hildegarde Naughton also hopes to contest. She was controversially described in the report as "weak but provides gender balance and a strong image which can be used to target other female candidates".

Difficult

Meanwhile, Mr Kenny told the

Mayo News

this week: “There are always 10 or 15 constituencies that are going to be difficult and Mayo will be one of these as the constituency is going from five to four seats. Negotiations are ongoing and we will be doing what we feel is the best approach to maximise the vote for the party in Mayo.”

He said Fine Gael would make its decision “with regard to candidates in Mayo” before the summer and all conventions would be over by the end of June.