FROM THE ARCHIVES: After losing her Dáil seat in the 1987 general election, the minister for womens affairs and Fine Gael TD for Dublin South, Nuala Fennell, set off on the Seanad electoral trail, long a fabled part of political tradition, in a successful bid to be elected to the Upper House. The experience brought her up many byways, as she described in this article.
THE SENATE election campaign has to be the Lough Derg of Elections – you eat very little – sleep very little – and speaking metaphorically, you spend a fair amount of time on your knees. Except, of course, it lasts, not for a weekend, but for six weeks, costs more than £1,500 and clocks up a mileage of around 9,000.
I set out, a first-time candidate on the Labour panel, having just completed a four-week General Election campaign, with substantial arrears of sleep and concentration problems.
All new candidates get off to a poor start – the Senate trail has a very bad reputation. No one has ever told me anything good about it. Others who have done it in previous years make a point of telling you the most horrific tales, and promise that, at the end you will be either mad, or at least hallucinating and disorientated from frustration and weariness.
Having had the experience first-hand I agree that it needs to be changed, for the system of election, which involves hundreds of candidates of all parties and none, charging around the country at breakneck speeds to meet and canvas county councillors, senators, and TDs is outmoded, wasteful of resources, and should be critically examined.
Person-to-person contact is only part of the canvass, albeit the most important – but there are also letters, endorsements from supporters, canvass cards, free pens, diaries, calendars, and I have heard it rumoured, free bottles of whiskey.
The objective of the exercise is to meet and canvass as many of your own party’s county councillors who could and might vote for you, instead of your party colleagues on the same panel.
So, methodically one prepares maps and itineraries. But again it goes by the board. Any scientific or co-ordinated plans to achieve maximum effects for miles travelled can tend to be abandoned very quickly.
Most county councillors have unstructured lives, being farmers, publicans, auctioneers, and they go to an awful lot of funerals, and meetings. So they are often not at home. Also any route plan on a map is battling against the dreadful signposting in this country. It is appalling everywhere . . . “Go left at the signpost where the Knock sign points up in the air” I was told.
It takes a while to realise that many country people take their own terrain for granted. For instance they will tell you: “Keep on up five miles at the very next turn to the left”, and it’s only when you are miles up a muddy lane that you realise “very next” did not include country lanes.
But other directions were even funnier . . . “take the right fork at the silage pit at the top of the town”, or “do you know where the Scrap Heap is, well he lives a mile beyond it.” As I said the purpose of the campaign is to pursue the quarry. I suspect however, that I went too far by appearing in one man’s kitchen at 11am because all his doors were unlocked. As he came out pulling on his pants, I discovered it was the wrong house, he wasn’t even a county councillor. But he charmingly directed me to the correct house.
Some knowledge of animal husbandry on my part might have improved my standing like knowing the difference between a hogget and a wether, and what on earth is a brush bull?
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