A little bit of history in the making

WHATEVER happens on June 6th, Cavan Monaghan will make a little bit of history. Either the constituency will elect its first Sinn Fein TD for 40 years, or it will return a woman deputy after an even longer gap.

The retirement of Fianna Fail veteran, Jimmy Leonard, has given Sinn Fein's Caoimhghin O Caolain a make or break chance to repeat the feat last achieved in 1957, on the wave of emotion that followed the death of Feargal O'Hanlon in the IRA's border campaign.

Of course, the party cut its electoral teeth in more recent times, during the hunger strike election of 1981. O Caolain was director of elections when Kieran Doherty won a seat, and much of his current campaign machine was put into place at that time.

It is no secret that Sinn Fein is targeting Leonard's seat. North Monaghan is Fianna Fail's soft underbelly, where the party feels the worst effects of surges in Republican support when Doherty was elected, it was the FF man who lost out.

Leonard's replacement on the party ticket, his 27 year old daughter, Ann, has just finished nursing studies. She suffers the disadvantage of having been based in Dublin for most of the past decade. Against that she is young, articulate and female and, with the active support of her father, is fighting a very energetic campaign.

But so, too, is the other potential female TD in the constituency, Labour's Ann Gallagher. On the back of her party's huge nationwide swing in 1992, she secured more than 4,500 first preferences and survived to the eighth count before the transfers of the main parties squeezed her out.

A solicitor based in Castleblayney, she is uncomfortably close to both her rivals bases. But like O Caolain, freedom from party boundaries gives her the run of the whole constituency - including Cavan town, where there is more of a natural Labour base than in Monaghan.

This dogfight for the fifth seat should not affect Fine Gael. There is, however, an outside chance of a change of personnel in favour of Senator Bill Cotter. Cotter won the party's highest first preference vote in 1992, before transfers saw him overtaken by Seymour Crawford in Monaghan and Andrew Boylan in Cavan.

Crawford, a Presbyterian, has a strong base in the constituency's still large Protestant electorate, and also in the IFA. Indeed, in one of the curiosities of the 1992 poll, he even took 200 transfers from Sinn Fein.

But the problems of beef farmers could hurt him more than most. That, and any collapse in Labour's vote - some of which could trickle down the Castleblayney Road to Carrickmacross based Cotter - gives the senator some chance of the second FG seat.

Fianna Fail's number crunchers find little real cause for worry about their third seat. But the combination of a new candidate and a vague fear that Sinn Fein's successes in the North might lift it in the Republic are causing party activists some unease.

Buoyed by those successes, O Caolain looks likely to poll well in excess of his 1992 vote of 4,200. To get within striking distance of a seat, however, he needs a much higher vote in Cavan than Sinn Fein has ever won before. Party claims aside, there is no evidence this is likely.

The second major problem is transfers. In the five counts he survived in 1992, O Caolain won only 148 preferences from the other candidates. Even with the legendary tightness of the main parties transfers, Labour added 552 votes over the same counts. Sinn Fein's poverty in this respect looks likely to continue, scuppering ambitions of a seat in the 28th Dail.

Labour, for its part, is putting a big effort into trying to take a first seat in the constituency. The party would probably win on a count of election posters, but without a 1992 style wind in its sails, it would be a remarkable performance if Gallagher gets anywhere near a seat this time.

Jimmy Leonard showed his tenacity as a campaigner in 1987, when the reappointment of Fine Gael's Tom Fitzpatrick as Ceann Comhairle reduced the constituency to a four seater. He was the likely fall guy, but held the seat in a 3-1 triumph for Fianna Fail. A repeat of that performance, this time on behalf of his daughter, will probably save the day again.