Fianna Fáil bask in reflected glory at Mayo centenary celebrations
By Dr. Richard Martin
I was in Ballina for Mayo Fianna Fáil’s centenary celebration dinner in the Great National Hotel.
Fianna Fáil was founded on May 16, 1926, at the La Scala Theatre in Dublin by Éamon de Valera and his supporters.
It was entirely appropriate that the event was held in Ballina. For two reasons.
Firstly, as it stands, the power base of Mayo FF is dominated by north Mayo. Starting with Minister Dara Calleary in Ballina, you have Paul McNamara in Achill, and moving across the north of the county from west to east, there is Sean Carey in Belmullet, Michael Loftus in Crossmolina, Annie May Reape in Ballina, John Caulfield in Kilkelly, and Adrian Forkan in Kiltimagh.
Calleary has six councillors working with him directly. He has maintained and nurtured the organisation over the past 20 years in spite of the slings and arrows that invariably strike without fear nor warning.
As a leader he understands that you have to bring people with you. The secret to any relationship inside and outside of politics is trust, and it’s impossible not to trust a man like Calleary.
A TD is only as strong as the elected councillors alongside him. Their relationship is reciprocal and symbiotic. They have access to discretionary funding.
An Oireachtas member doesn’t. €350,000 over a five-year lifespan. He has a constituency office (they don’t) that can sort the bread and butter work, the passports, the medical cards and so on.
The councillors need access to an office to sort the everyday concerns of the electorate. When both work in tandem and harmony a political organisation will thrive. A politician that doesn’t understand that reciprocal dynamic doesn’t understand politics and will eventually lose the seat. It’s that simple.
The second reason - iconic anti-treaty republicans and founding fathers of the FF party like P.J. Ruttledge and Tom Ruane hailed from Ballina. Both served in the Oireachtas as TD and senator respectively.
Tom Ruane’s daughter Maureen Tobin (RIP) lived in Castlebar. She was an exceptionally close friend of my grandmother and mother. She brought a bit of glamour and style to the political arena. All things be equal, the woman I knew was a queen.
Before the dinner, the guests mingled in the foyer of the hotel. I stood near the entrance as Padraig Flynn entered with his wife Dorothy, his daughter Beverley and his grandchildren Harry and Caoilinn Gaughan.
There’s something about Padraig Flynn that is completely unique. When he enters a room, he generates an electricity and a buzz of excitement. It’s a razzamatazz, a showmanship, a charisma, a theatricality and a presence I’ve never quite encountered before.
My admiration for Flynn is fairly straightforward and simple. I’m a Castlebar man. First and foremost, I have a loyalty to the town, and his loyalty to the town can never be questioned. He delivered. Whatever is said and unsaid, it can never be taken from him. End of the story.
I was lucky to exchange a few words with Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers in the foyer. Of course, as we all know he is a Mayo man.
A Newport father and a mother from Garrymore, in time he will be a leader of the party and a Taoiseach. In time. He’s still a young man.
It usually takes roughly 20 years of graft to make it to the top.
I sat at a table alongside Eugene Rochford from Crossmolina. His wife Carmel is the daughter of Jack Garrett, who was a FF senator from 1969 to 1977. Their son Stephen is the Irish Times football columnist and former Mayo manager. They were and are wonderful company.
The main players sat at the top of the room at two tables. Cabinet Minister Dara Calleary, the Flynns, the long-serving Midwest reporter Teresa O’Malley, cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council John Caulfield and former senator Frank Chambers.
Sat at the other table were Jack Chambers, Barry Cowen, Michael Moynihan, Western People editor James Laffey and Lisa Chambers.
Dotted across the room were former and current councillors. Al McDonnell, Damian Ryan, Jimmy Maloney and so on. Former councillor Jimmy Maloney sat at a table with his granddaughter Bevin alongside the Gaughan siblings.
Looking at the power tables at the front, I couldn’t help but think Minister Calleary has powerful friends. There’s two Fianna Fáils - the FF party and the FF organisation. The Callearys, the Flynns and the Cowens are old school dynastic FF with deep connections in the organisation across the island.
Ballina is a fair old distance from Brussels and Clara is a fair old spin too. It was telling that Barry Cowen attended. A statement in fact.
The Cowens have huge influence in FF. Micheál Martin broke ranks with Brian Cowen at the end of his tenure as party leader and Taoiseach.
If Calleary is to make a move for the leadership of FF he needs the right friends. Looking at the tables that night he has them.
The dynamic he has in situ at local level with local politicians is the same at national level. He’s respected across the board.
Jim O’Callaghan is the bookies favourite for the leadership, but I still think Calleary is a massive draw with the grassroots. Ultimately, the grassroots will have their say.
Jack Chambers and Shane Moynihan are Dublin TDs. Calleary needs the urban Dublin support. Shane Moynihan’s wife Teresa is from Claremorris. Odds are Moynihan is with Calleary. These things matter.
The cathaoirleach John Caulfield gave a brief address before the dinner: “Every single time Fianna Fáil have been in government, they have faced challenges, and they have stepped up to the mark on every occasion.
"Fifteen years ago, did we have to think that we'd ever alone, sold out, celebrating a hundred years of Fianna Fáil? But we worked together and continued to work together to build a party and come back from those dark days. Today, we're in a fortunate position.
"We have the biggest party in Dáil Éireann, we have the biggest number of county councillors in the country. And yes, we have, we will have challenges, but we will work together to continue that this party works for the next hundred years to serve the country as it has done for the last.”
The format of the evening was relaxed. Teresa O’Malley moved across the two tables with a microphone and spoke with the guests.
Halfway through the dinner, she spoke with former councillor, senator and TD Lisa Chambers. Lisa is now a director of public affairs with Consello in Dublin.
In her contribution, she did say that she wanted to run for the council again. It gave the room a good stir. I approached her afterwards and quizzed her.
What’s going on? Oh no, she said, ‘in 20 years’ time when I’ve retired’.
She must’ve given poor Annie May a right fright. My sense is her time in public life isn’t finished. Her contributions on national radio carry weight and substance.
She’s a young woman, and would poll strongly in the right Dublin constituency. Emmett Stagg, Pat Rabbitte and Lucinda Creighton are all Mayo people who were elected in Dublin constituencies. Watch this space.
Dara Calleary gave the closing address. I’ve watched him do this a lot over the years, but I have yet to meet a politician that can improvise as well as he can when he’s in full flow.
Nothing is scripted. Ergo, if it’s not scripted it’s authentic. If it’s authentic, it’s coming from a place of truth and passion.
The passion in his speech for the achievements of Fianna Fáil over the past 100 years was clearly evident.
He stated: “Fianna Fáil never saw Ireland West Airport as a foggy, boggy hill in the middle of Mayo.
"We know the party that did. We saw it as an airport. We saw it as something that would do and grow our county in the way that it has.
"But we have yet to finish the job. The strategic development zone, the employment, the opportunities of enterprise have to follow, and we will see that through.
“The work that was done on establishing GMIT, now ATU, ensures that Mayo is a university county.
"Sixty years ago this week, we took one of the biggest decisions in the history of this country that only a Fianna Fáil minister would have taken.
"Free secondary school education. Even to say the words now sounds like it was not always the way. But up until the mid-sixties, secondary school education was the reserve of the wealthy.
"People did not get that opportunity. Instead, they took to the boats. And Donogh O'Malley, a Fianna Fáil minister in 1966, with the support of then Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, decided, no, that is not going to be the way.
"And in doing so, the biggest revolution that we have seen in our country began. A revolution that is still today the basis of our economic, our cultural and our social success, because of the joy, because of the difference education has made. In 1972, Jack Lynch and Dr. Paddy Hillary ensured our entry into the European Union.
"And today, you can go into the land on which P.J. Ruttledge’s house was, now home to 1,000 employees in Hollister, making state-of-the-art medical products, some of which was designed here in Ballina by Irish-educated, Mayo-born researchers, that now sustains 1,000 jobs.
"Across this county, employment is on the foundation of education. Cutting-edge jobs are here in Mayo in a way that they could not be, could never be without education, without the decision of Donogh O'Malley to create free education and our successive Fianna Fáil education ministers to invest in education infrastructure.”
Dara Calleary and Beverley Flynn don’t have to prepare and swot over what they say. They don’t because they don’t know anything else. They have been marinated in politics and Irish history from root and acorn.
Interestingly, Calleary closed with the following: “And, hopefully, of all the aims that we have as a party laid out in La Scala Theatre, we'll continue to work towards them. Most importantly of all, the aim of unifying our island as a 32-county republic. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the role of a republican party.”
Was it a pointed barb at Micheál Martin? No shared island wishy washy stuff. It was simple language that the room understood and it was met with a thunderous round of applause.
The grassroots are tired of hearing about shared islands and the softly, softly approach. A core value of the party is its allegiance to the sacred flame of 1916. In matters of principle there are no tactics.
Like Ballina, Castlebar needs a cabinet minister – the car with a star. Anything else is a waste of time.
Opposition TDs are just that. Opposition. They can howl at the moon all they want, but delivery, real delivery can only come from the cabinet table.
Ballina is now in a position where major projects can be delivered.
Currently, commuters can sit in an hour of traffic trying to traverse the town across the Moy. It’s intolerable. If the infrastructural challenges are overcome, the satellite towns will thrive.
Ballina will thrive. A rising tide lifts all boats; Killala, Enniscrone, Foxford and Crossmolina will lift together. The entire region will lift.
On the Monday after the event, Dara Calleary announced that Ballina is to receive €7.6 million in funding from the new Towns and Cities Regeneration Investment Fund programme - €7.5m for the regeneration of Ballina Quay and €150,000 for a Ballina Town Centre Project Design Measure.
Opposition TDs cannot make announcements like that. They just can’t, and ultimately it all comes back to delivery.
If Calleary delivers his legacy is set in stone. I believe he will.