The parties are on the lookout for good local election candidates in advance of next summer’s contest.
There is a young man in Waterford who fits the bill perfectly. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has met him, but it is not known whether he urged him to join the local Fine Gael branch and seek a party nomination.
The Taoiseach was defending Government policy in the face of an onslaught from Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins about the forced exodus of young people to foreign parts to find work. "They are in Australia, Canada and Britain," said Higgins.
It was then that Kenny referred to a major success story: “I met a young man in Waterford the other day who went to Australia, worked for 14 months doing two and three jobs when he could, came back with €100,000 and set up his own business.”
Imagine the impression this young man would make on the doorsteps on an electorate disillusioned with politics. Fianna Fáil, desperately searching the highways and byways of Ireland for good candidates, were reportedly frantically seeking his name last night.
Hope of return
Kenny said he hoped that many of the young people who had left would have the opportunity to return in future years. Higgins was unimpressed. "Soup kitchens," he muttered.
Higgins referred to a recent EU summit, where leaders met “behind swathes of security and police to protect them from the people of Europe”. Had anyone looked outside the bubble and referred to the devastating Red Cross report on the economic and social effects of the austerity crisis throughout Europe?
“Former middle-class citizens are living in trailers, tents . . . and are hesitating to go to the Red Cross,” he said.
It amounted to a devastating critique on a day in which the Government trumpeted the reduction in unemployment at home.
Kenny asked Higgins if he thought anyone in politics, or whatever party, was happy with a situation where 26 million people were out of work in the EU. Did he think anyone was happy that six million people under the age of 25 were unemployed?
The exchanges then became ideological.
“The deputy seems to think this can be suddenly changed by one of his financial instruments,” added Kenny. “I am sorry but it requires fiscal discipline . . . and cutting out the waste.”
Kenny then referred to Higgins's native heath in the Dingle Peninsula, in Kerry, and addressed the Socialist Party TD in near-Churchillian tones. "Coming from a western county facing the Atlantic, Deputy Higgins knows that time after time, in adversity after adversity, when the Irish people identify a problem they roll up their sleeves and always achieve a result," he said. "And we will continue to do this for 2014."
Higgins was unimpressed. “Bled dry for bondholders . . .”
Higgins, irreversibly of the hard left, is unlikely to see ministerial office. But there is a good potential local election candidate in Waterford if he could be persuaded to join his electoral crusade.
