Selected!

I’ve been here before and I’m back again. It brought back a memory of one night when I was a young student in 1982. I told my mother I wouldn’t be home til late. I would be at a selection conference for Ruairi Quinn. She told me someday I’d be going to my own selection conference. How right she is!

And so it is that Labour selected its team for Wexford District for the local elections in 2019. Maura Bell, George Lawlor and myself will be on the stump for the next 5 months.  The news that there will be no general election before 2020 will focus minds on the local and European elections as well as the referenda next May.

Maura will bring a lot to the team. She has a track record second to none in developing the tourist product in Wexford. She’s practical, down to earth a straight talker and straight thinker who will go down well on the doorsteps. There’s little more that even I can add to what’s been said about George already except this. If Wexford di  that not even NASA could build a satellite to reach us.

dn’t have George as its councillor and Mayor in the last 5 years, we’d have been so far up the swannee

Last time round was a bruising experience for me.  My first preference vote was well down on expectations but strong transfers saw me pick up and challenge at the end. Politics is not all about elections. It’s about the people who you want to serve. Elections are but one part of a bigger picture that is neither about winning or losing but it’s about counting. And it’s people who count, not votes.

The reality is that in the last 4 years those councillors who set out to win the debate in 2014 with simple populist slogans delivered very little for all their time on the council. There’s been no advance for Wexford’s hopes of a university college since Labour left office 3 years ago, no development of the harbour and nothing done about bringing new jobs to Wexford.  National issues were used to win seats at local level by candidates who delivered precious little subsequently at local level.

Since the amalgamation of the Chambers of Commerce, there is no advocate for business in the town. I threw my eyes to heaven when I heard that the Co Wexford Chamber are now pitching to McCauleys to move their HQ from Wexford to Gorey as an alternative to Dublin. Where is the opposition to that suggestion? Councillors who were mighty mouse at the last local election on issues about unemployment and marginalisation are now as quiet as church mice when it comes to defending the interest of jobs in Wexford.

It’s time to roar back at the lazy and lethargic  local councillors who’ve turned their backs on what they themselves identified as what was wrong. Politics isn’t about elections, it’s about people, it’s about people all the time not just election time.

Bring it on! I think Ruairi would approve.