ON THE CANVASS with DECLAN GANLEY:ON BALLINASLOE'S Main Street on Saturday afternoon, two points strike home quickly: firstly there are few about and, secondly, Declan Ganley is not a natural canvasser.
Again and again, the Libertas candidate stands on the street while his younger brother Seán enters a shop-door, hands out literature, and starts a chat.
However, once he overcomes his half-second of reserve, Ganley snr is off at a full gallop, with a well-practised argument that mixes support for a “Judaeo-Christian Europe”, and allegations about the ever-creeping control of the European Union.
Ganley’s international reach explains his late arrival in the Galway town because he was delayed by foreign journalists’ interviews in Athlone and more await him when his campaign bus pulls up at St Michael’s Square.
But there are few voters about. The weekly open-air market by the church is practically empty. Some stallholders play cards to while away the time.
“We are looking for your No 1 vote to go in and shake things up. You know I can do it,” Ganley tells one bemused shopper.
Clearly knowing little about him and slighted irritated by the interruption, the woman looks up, “Are you from England?” she asks. Ganley roars laughing, “No, I’m from Glenamaddy.”
Nearby, brother Seán’s attempt to offer literature to another woman is rebuffed sternly. “I’m pro-Lisbon,” she says with a frown. “Well, we are pro-Europe,” says Seán politely. “Well, I’m pro-Lisbon,” the woman replies, and moves on, staring straight ahead.
However, there is support, too. The parish shop on Main Street has a poster in its window advertising Libertas’s Sunday night public meeting in the town, alongside the Child of Prague, rosary beads and holy water bottles and a notification about the upcoming Our Lady of Clonfert Novena.
Sometimes, the support has to be worked for. Michael Twohig, who now lives, he says, on a €208 disability pension, interrogates Ganley about Libertas’s funding: “We would love to know where you are getting it,” he said. “Donations,” says Ganley, “Will you make one?” “I will not,” says Twohig.
However, the two then discuss disability issues, and the EU’s role, “They have done some good work, in fairness. People like Kathy Sinnott.
“Everyone else seems to be getting bailed out. The fact is that we are being made to pay for economic illiteracy,” declares Ganley.
Having started off critically, Twohig has softened: “That sounds good. I will give you my vote,” he says, as Libertas’s own photographer snaps the meeting of the minds.
Stallholder John Tierney from Clareen, Co Offaly – “Clareen. Not Clara,” he says pointedly – asks how the campaign is going, and grumbles that red tape is affecting business. Ganley sympathises, “I know what it is like to worry about a small business.”
Because he is running an EU-wide campaign, Ganley does interviews with the two French TV crews, and one French radio reporter, and lays on praise with a trowel. “France is the beating heart of Europe,” he tells one.
At a pub, Seán Ganley enters. His brother, fidgety, stays outside. “Are you not going in?” he is asked. “No, I’ll let Seán go in. I might not get out,” he replies.
Rising from tending to two young children in a double-buggy, Karen Reynolds, who worked for Ganley’s wife Delia’s family in New York for a time, bursts into a smile at the unexpected sight of Ganley. “Great to see you, Declan,” she says, offering a hug.
Outside Salmon’s shop, Ganley is approached by a Dundalk man, livid, he says, about Bulgarians and Romanians living off Irish social welfare: “Our own government lied to us,” he says passionately.
Clearly uncomfortable, Ganley stays in conversation, unlike professional politicians who would have long since have moved on by now, and defends the rights of emigrants to seek a better life, but not illegal immigration.
“I did it. My parents did it. My grandparents did it. The story of this part of Ireland is one of emigration,” he tells the man.
Internationally immigrants, he says, are young, create businesses and wealth, as he strikes a different tone from the one made last week by the party’s Ireland East candidate, Raymond O’Malley.
Then, O’Malley advocated that EU workers should have to get an EU “blue card” before they could work in other EU states, while permits for non-EU workers should be discouraged.
“I finished school in 1987. I worked in abattoirs, cut turf. When I went abroad, I got opportunities. I created businesses, and I was fortunate that I was able to come back.
“Most people are coming to Europe for jobs, not welfare. Europe has to find ways to help other countries to develop their own economies, so their people can stay,” he says.
Puzzled, it appears, by Ganley’s answers, the French radio reporter points out that Philippe de Villiers, Libertas’s leading French candidate – and the man who coined the phrase, “the Polish plumber” – is stridently anti-immigration.
Ganley, who is keen to predict that Libertas will be a coherent, united voice in the European Parliament, professes to see no contradiction.
“Every country has a different perspective on this. Malta, for instance, has a different problem, because it is on the front line of North African immigration,” he says.
By now the day has moved on and Westport awaits, and Ganley and his team head for some food before heading onwards.
Conscious that the afternoon’s canvassing was less than brisk, Ganley, tucking into apple tart and custard, offers an invitation to come on a busier day: “We are going to win this, you know.”
