Kevin Myers AT LARGE: "Tipperary is not Timbuctoo" is the rallying cry with which Bill Dwan of the PDs is trying to wrest a seat in North Tipperary. Frankly, I have never heard a more irrefutable piece of political wisdom in my life.
Try as you will; you cannot prove him wrong. He is clearly the Plato of Thurles; but that is unlikely to trouble the reigning king, Michael Lowry.
He too would agree that his county is not a small town (pop: c. 20,000) in Mali, but not even the ruler of that happy land could have as many pictures of himself everywhere as Michael Lowry has around Thurles. They're rather odd, those posters. The normal poster-technique is for the subjects' eyes to follow the viewer. Not Michael Lowry's. As you move, one eye closes shrewdly, declaring: This man's in the know. Say no more. See you round the back of the pub in five minutes, and we'll get whatever you want fixed sorted out there. (Wink). Not a word, mind.
Though probably not given to wrestling his colleagues to the ground and biting their ears, Michael Lowry clearly belongs to the Michael Collins strand in Fine Gael, little scraps of paper in every pocket, and a bit of dirt on everyone. He's not Kevin O'Higgins that's for sure. Lowry election pamphlets probably contain one outline planning permission, one medical card, and a meal voucher at Restaurant na Michael Lowry.
The sitting Fianna Fáil TD Michael Smith told a local meeting the town should give Fianna Fáil a fair crack of the whip. What? Bondage in Thurles? Well those long winter nights, one has to do something. He added they were not looking for Michael Lowry's seat, oh dear me no, perish the thought, as if that would be in impossibly bad taste, like a Jesuit distributing business-cards at a Glenstal ordination.
Minister Smith also probably knows that the Fianna Fáil machine locally is certainly not Tammany-on-Suir. When I asked in one shop where the party offices were, I might just as well have asked for the headquarters of the Albigensian heresy. After a puzzled confab, held more out of politeness than any conviction they'd find the answer, I was told they didn't think there were any - What do you call them? Fianna Fáil? - offices in Thurles.
I asked in the shop next door. The woman there promptly ran out the back, as if I'd walked in, winked, told her she was quite nice, but did she have a younger, prettier sister, please? She didn't return.
On the bridge in the centre of Thurles, there's a plaque to commemorate where the commandant of the Volunteers, James Leahy, dived into the Suir to escape crown forces in March 1918. Ah. So that's it. Michael Lowry is merely following a town tradition. They appear to like their customers slippery in Thurles, and especially if they're called L***y.