THE DUBLIN West byelection campaign has begun in earnest after the writ to allow for the holding of the election was moved in the Dáil last night.
Socialist Party candidate Councillor Ruth Coppinger, one of the favourites to win the seat formerly held by the late Fianna Fáil TD Brian Lenihan, will start her campaign today with a claim that she is the only Opposition candidate who can defeat the Government parties.
With just over three weeks to go before polling day on October 27th, the constituency is being heavily canvassed by all the main parties. Much of the campaign, which is being overshadowed by the presidential poll being held on the same day, is dominated by local issues.
Fianna Fáil, which is running Cllr David McGuinness (25), yesterday accused Minister for Health James Reilly of pretending to “open” a unit at the constituency’s Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown that had already been open for 18 months.
The party’s health spokesman, Billy Kelleher, claimed the endoscopy unit was opened during Mr Lenihan’s time as a TD and it was an “insult to voters’ intelligence” to present it as a new development. Mr Reilly said the unit had not been opened before and he was only following standard practice in officially doing so.
Aside from Mr McGuinness, three other byelection candidates also contested the general election: Labour’s Patrick Nulty; Sinn Féin’s Paul Donnelly; and Roderic O’Gorman of the Green Party.
The other byelection candidates are: Eithne Loftus of Fine Gael; and Barry Caesar Hunt, a barber shop owner who appeared last year on TV3’s The Apprentice and is running as an Independent.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin paid tribute to Mr Lenihan, who died of pancreatic cancer last June, when moving the writ for the byelection in the Dáil, but also emphasised local issues.
Mr Lenihan left behind him “a stunning record of achievement and accomplishment on behalf of the community in Dublin West”, Mr Martin said.
He said Fianna Fáil would run a positive campaign highlighting local issues.
“The problems the people of Dublin West are experiencing will not be resolved by the parties of the hard left who offer nothing but the politics of protest, empty rhetoric and, in the final analysis, no credible solutions.”
Equally, the constituency did not need “another voiceless Government backbench TD”.