Comeback King! Recount drama in north Longford as incredible Cassidy revival grabs final seat for Fianna Fáil

To paraphrase Meatloaf, three out of five ain’t bad. At one stage, there looked likely to be four seats for Fine Gael in Granard municipal district.

Fianna Fáil faced an existential crisis in North Longford, until David Cassidy staged the mother of all comebacks to snatch the final seat, following a recount.

With Turlough ‘Pott’ McGovern’s strong vote of 2019 holding up well (1,413 first preferences), FF were left to battle for the final seat.

Given that there is a Fianna Fáil TD in the county, scrabbling for the final seat certainly wasn’t in the plan.

Running two candidates in neighbouring parishes (Cassidy and Susan Murphy) didn’t work out that well, with just over 100 votes separating them.

Also read: How you voted in Granard municipal district: Fine Gael secure massive 59% of first preference vote but fail to nail four seats

It looked like Fianna Fáil ceded the Ballinalee area to Fine Gael by not running a candidate in that part of the district.

Meanwhile, in the Longford District, the party is in rude health, taking four out of the seven seats.

So what has gone so wrong for FF in North Longford?

Also read: Fine Gael polls 13% higher than Fianna Fáil in Longford local elections as the parties share sixteen seats

Fine Gael have undoubtedly strengthened their base in the district, under the guidance of Senator Micheál Carrigy.

Carrigy will need a strong vote in the North Longford area, if he is to succeed in taking a seat at the next General Election.

However, he has been dealt a blow by the fact that the man who was co-opted to replace him on the council in 2020, Colin Dalton, lost his seat.

Dalton polled 820 first preferences, but surprisingly this was not enough to get him re-elected.

As with the Ballymahon MD, this calls into question the vote management of Fine Gael.

In 2014, Luie McEntire, Martin Mulleady and PJ Reilly were all returned as councillors for the district for Fianna Fail. And that came just three years after FF suffered a General Election meltdown in 2011.

Also read: “It is very hard to know what went wrong. In my time, North Longford was a heartland for Fianna Fáil”

The party felt that they had a strong candidate in the Granard/Abbeylara part of the district this time, with former school principal Marett Smith aiming to directly replace PJ Reilly.

But Smith polled a disappointing 282 first preferences.

To add insult to injury, Granard’s Padraig McNamara took a seat for FG.

The very strong poll topping performance from Garry Murtagh (1,450) is a big success for FG in the district.

However, losing the seat that Micheál Carrigy had held since 2009 in Ballinalee is something that will spark an inquest for the party.

Candidate selection is obviously an area that FF needs to give its full attention to in this district.

It’s not an easy thing to field a candidate who combines substance with the ability to attract votes. However, Fianna Fail has had such big personalities in North Longford in the past - Luie McEntire, Bat Lynch among others.

Also read: Six new faces and three recounts as Longford local elections produce plenty of drama

Granard is clearly an area that the party needs to pinpoint in this regard.

The fact that Turlough McGovern has proven not to be a flash in the pan changes the political landscape. Granard was a district which traditionally was dominated by the two main parties.

Now, one of the big vote getters is an independent. The two main parties both still have one councillor each who commands over 1,000 first preferences.

Also read: Fine Gael strike deal with Independents to retain control of Longford council