The announcement by Ciaran Cannon that he will not contest the next general election brings to 11 the number of Fine Gael TDs who won seats in 2020 and will not seek to hold them at the next election.
Cannon is the 10th to announce his departure in the past year or so, with the former Dublin Bay South TD and minister for housing Eoghan Murphy resigning his seat in 2021. Fine Gael sources speculate there are more to come, with questions typically directed at older TDs Bernard Durkan and Michael Ring, as well as wilder rumours about some of the more prominent frontbenchers. All currently maintain they will stand again. But as one senior party figure puts it, “you’re running in the next election until you’re not”.
Two sitting MEPs, Frances Fitzgerald – rumoured to have designs on a presidential bid – and Deirdre Clune are also stepping down.
So of the 35 TDs who won seats for Fine Gael at the 2020 general election it is heading towards a third of them who won’t seek re-election. In an electoral system where incumbency is a proven advantage that is a significant blow to the party.
The latest departure adds to a growing unease in Fine Gael as the party prepares its bid to be returned to power for an unprecedented fourth time in a row. While Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has sought to explain the departures as the natural churn in a party that saw a large number of first-time TDs elected in 2011, and although each retirement is explicable by its own individual circumstances, there is no doubt that the exodus of incumbents has two effects – it weakens the party by depriving it of proven vote-getters, and damages morale in an organisation already jumpy about its prospects.
True, Cannon’s departure is unlikely to cost the party a seat; Galway East gains an extra seat to become a four-seater under the boundary revisions announced last summer, and two seats out of four would always have been a stretch. Like many other constituencies a Sinn Féin candidate who narrowly missed out last time is considered a dead cert next time out. And the extra seat means that the Sinn Féin gain need not be at anyone’s expense. Local Fine Gaelers will be glad of that.
The official line from Fine Gael is to talk of generational change, and to pepper their responses with the names of new candidates who are gunning to replace the old guard. And it is true that the party has a crop of promising replacements waiting for their chances. But there is no escaping the unease now current in the party about its future, its prospects and – sometimes – its leader. Simmering not far below the surface, that unease has just been ratcheted up another notch or two.
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