ON THE CANVASS with SEÁN KELLY:IN 1982, Seán Kelly founded the St Patrick's hurling club in east Kerry, and for good measure, he also decided to take up the game himself.
Kelly was 30 years of age at the time, which many would regard as about 27 years too late for hurling. And the hurling tradition around his native Kilcommin was as strong as the football tradition around Ballyhale in Kilkenny. Kelly the hurler, and the club he founded, weren’t world beaters. Yet they both persevered, both survived.
That little triumph of optimism over complacency is redolent of Kelly, the to-his-core GAA man. It is also telling of Kelly, the nascent politician.
His thinking tends to be exponential, but his actions tend to be incremental.
“I want to be a different type of MEP. I hope I was a different type of GAA president. I say to myself that I will do it better. I am practical enough to see a situation as it is, see what can be achieved, and then do it bit by bit,” he says.
It is lunchtime in the pretty seaside town of Dungarvan in west Waterford.
It has been drizzling on and off all morning. “Welcome to the sunny southeast,” says councillor Damian Geoghegan with an ironic tone. He is one of a group of local activists chaperoning Kelly in an urgent sweep of the town and the shopping centre.
There’s an evident enthusiasm to Fine Gael people these days. Explains Geoghegan: “People look at your literature and once it’s not Fianna Fáil, you are okay,” he says.
The rules of engagement for the European elections are different. The constituencies are so vast that there’s no time for door-knocking. The key is visibility. Hit a town. Blitz the centre and the shopping malls. Make sure the local media is there. Shake as many hands as possible. Move on.
The small-framed and hirsute Kelly doesn’t strike you at first glance as a typical candidate. Once he’s on the move, though, the qualities that brought him to the top of the GAA hierarchy become obvious. He has very high energy levels, is an impressive strategic thinker, and has an easy manner with people.
Kelly was the first European candidate to set up Facebook and Twitter sites. But those tools are negligible. There is only one portal to the people of the South constituency for him, and that is sport.
The salvo from his team of helpers goes something like this: “This is Seán Kelly, Fine Gael’s candidate for Europe, former GAA president, the man who opened up Croke Park.” The GAA connection is without any doubt an asset, and one that is employed incessantly. “How’s the hurling?” he asks those he meets on the street, and listens patiently as the various woes of Waterford hurling are outlined to him.
What is striking is the lack of engagement from people on European issues.
Nobody brings up Lisbon. Nobody brings up the European Parliament. Few of the short conversations stray behind sport; and of course most conversations are initiated by Kelly or his team.
“I know you from the Gah”, says one man with a golfing pullover.
Another young man in the shopping centre, dressed in a tracksuit, turns out to be the son of a prominent GAA official. “You don’t have to worry, you have my vote,” says the young man.
Then Kelly quizzes the young man up and down about how his club career is going. Another man standing outside a pub gives him a blow-by-blow account of last year’s semi-final win over Tipp.
Kelly tells him he watched the match in Beijing during the Olympics, keeping John Treacy (the Waterford athlete who is now head of the Sports Council) updated by text. Treacy could not avoid being in the stadium.
A man standing near a stall selling plants and flowers in the main square says he will take Kelly’s brochure as long as he is not Fianna Fáil. He says he will never vote for “that shower” again.
The candidate says that has become a refrain, though it doesn’t arise again during an hour’s canvassing. Kelly also concedes the ire is not always directed just at Fianna Fáil. “There’s a certain percentage who are browned off with all politicians. That is understandable and regrettable,” he says.
Inside a pharmacist’s shop, a woman stops his greeting by saying she has no interest in sport. And before he can change channels, she adds: “And I’ve no interest in politics or religion either”. End of conversation.
He crosses the square and enters the hardware shop founded by the late Tommy Curran, who was full forward for Waterford in 1948, the last time the county won an All-Ireland. Two of the other visits are to sports shops. It does not take genius to get the drift of the campaign.
Kelly argues it’s much more than trading on a connection. He says he wants to bring some of the GAA philosophy to the brief, of building up from community level, of empowering people locally. “I want to use the talents and experience I have gained in the GAA over the years by being a strong voice at the table,” he says.
At the same time there’s a bit of the independent republic to Kelly. He showed up at the bash for Michael Lowry’s 20th anniversary as a TD recently.
The Independent TD is a former senior GAA official in Tipperary. In this case at least, blood seems to be thicker than water.
Kelly and his running mate, the sitting MEP Colm Burke, have had the odd bit of tension but it has been low-key. There was a little spat over Lowry. And some minor “aberrations” over postering.
Kelly’s personal posters are not allowed in Cork city; the same rules applies to Burke’s posters in Kerry.
His response to the claim that he is a celebrity candidate is that Enda Kenny “wants to attract new people into politics. At times of crisis, there have been calls to arms in the past. Now it’s a call to a different type of service and that’s why I am entering politics,” he says.
He’s not a celebrity in the George Lee mould, but his GAA connection is evident, though some believe it plays more with male than female voters. Others think it is more than enough. There is a growing consensus that Kelly will win a seat and may even challenge Brian Crowley as the poll-topper.
