Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin has told the Laois members of the party to target a second seat in the county in the next General Election.
Speaking at the party’s dinner dance in the Castle Arms Hotel on Friday night, he praised Sean Fleming for pulling in 35% of the vote in 2016 but said that a second seat must now be the priority.
“I feel a lot of energy coming out of the last general election,” said Mr Martin in his address. “That is all due to the effort and commitment that you on the ground put in, particularly here in Laois.
“Sean Fleming got an extraordinary vote, 35% of the vote. That was down to the people on the ground, in the various cumanns in the parishes in the county.
“That creates the platform for us to go after the second seat in the next election. The target now is that. I have asked all members of our parliamentary party to look in their own constituencies and see how they can add seats to those that we already have so that we have a critical mass of seats and can take government next time around.
“We need to go to into government with sufficient strength and capacity to make decisions for the country and to be decisive in government, something the current government is not.”
He added that his biggest concern going into the 2016 General Election was the relative inexperience of many of the party’s candidates. But more than doubling their seats in the Dail – from 20 to 44 – has left them in a stronger place.
“As a result of that general election we have a tremendous infusion of new people, a new generation of politicians, in addition to the experienced politicians within the parliamentary party. “One can sense new energy and a greater vibrancy across the country because of their presence.
“And additionally because of the presence of so many women TDs. That was a challenge for the party coming out of 2011 – the need to broaden our profile, diversify, more women in politics. We achieved that to a certain extent but we’re going to have to go further in the next general election.”
And addressing a large crowd of party members, Mr Martin used the opportunity to criticise the Fine Gael-led government.
“It is drifting and lacking direction in some key policy areas, such as health, housing and Brexit.
“Fine Gael is beset by internal angst, because of their leadership issues and whatever else is going on. They were annoyed after the general election, and annoyed with the idea we were facilitating – note the word facilitate not support – a minority-led government.
“That’s what we’re doing and the reason we’re doing that … is to enable the country to have a government in the aftermath of the election.”
And while the party is looking to attract more members over the coming year, the Fianna Fail leader was keen to stress that his party did attempt to go into government after the last election.
“We got the sense that people did not want the return of Fine Gael-Labour government. My party put myself forward as the nominee as Taoiseach on three separate occasions.
“We didn’t get the support of the independents, we didn’t get the support of the smaller parties and no other party was prepared to facilitate an alternative to Fine Gael and to Labour.
“So when Sinn Fein and Anti Austerity and all of them talk about us facilitating a Fine Gael government, the responsibility is on them. They had the wherewithal to facilitate a Fianna Fail-led minority government if they wanted to.”
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