The publication of career leaflets by the Department of Labour in 1967 prompted John Healy in his Backbencher column to fill in the only gap in the series - how to become a TD.
A MAN of no marked intellectual ability but with a fundamental knowledge of life in the grassroots will often succeed in Getting a Nomination and subsequently defeating a University-educated BRIGHT YOUNG MAN on this basis. The would-be T.D. is always a promising man - and generally he will be known throughout his career as a promising man and many were promising when death, or the electorate, ended a most promising career.
All candidates must more or less pass muster at a meeting of party members. In Fianna Fail such a meeting is called a Cumann meeting. Having won ratification at Cumann level you then go on to the county board so to speak. Here the party sorts out potential and rival candidates by what it calls The System.
The nomination goes to the man who can pack the convention. (In Fianna Fail there is a rough justice which says that the man who can produce the most votes from such cumainn has passed the first test: if he had the initiative and political foresight to whip up a dozen paper cumainn at 10/- a cumainn (sic) for a nominating convention six months in advance of the death which created the by-election, he is deemed to have shown a shrewdness which is necessary to survive.
In later years when he is worried about his own health, but does not want to see a doctor to confirm the worst, he will find out his health rating by checking with Fianna Fail Headquarters, asking casually how many new cumainn have been registered in his constituency lately. It takes a lot of effort, on being told we have a couple of new ones down there to say, Yes, I have been working over that part of the constituency and trying to organise it and go about your business knowing the worst.
The Fine Gael selection method is much more gentlemanly. One makes oneself known, in a discreet way, first to the local bosses - themselves discreet men - and carefully over 18 months to the people in Dublin. Knowing Mr. [Gerard] Sweetman is a help. Knowing Mr. Gerry LEstrange is not a help. A professional qualification or membership of a prominent farming organisation is desirable. In this party, too, there is a formality of a nominating convention. It is no more than that. Not to worry. It will be all right on the night.
Political experts predict that in the future entry to the Labour Party platform as a candidate will necessitate membership of a Union, preferably the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In view of this, it seems to be a sine qua non that a minimum educational requirement will be Intermediate Certificate or the Day Group Certificate. This being so, Labour may thus be regarded as the party of the intellectuals.
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