The Race for the Áras (24 page)

The Davis campaign had taken over the same faux-Georgian offices used by Fine Gael as its headquarters for the general election a few months earlier. Davis was on first-name terms with most of the fifty or so people who insisted on shaking hands with her and wishing her well, delaying her progress up the staircase to a side room off the large three-windowed room that had been set up for the launch with a small stage, lighting and
PA
.

In contrast to the Mitchell launch, with its big political names, the Davis launch event was peopled almost exclusively by the media, with only a handful of her election workers present. The now retired governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, rose from his seat among the audience and took the podium to introduce Mary Davis as a ‘person of integrity and humanity'. He had forgotten to introduce himself, but later in his remarks he announced his identity.

Davis emerged from a side door and took to the podium, standing in front of the flags of the four provinces. She spoke of her experience of imagining and then bringing the Special Olympics to Ireland in 2003, her organisational skills in co-ordinating thirty thousand volunteers, and her negotiating skills as she dealt with governments and their officials in fifty-eight countries.

Setting out her priorities, she announced a work plan for the first hundred days and said she would organise conventions on mental health, the elderly, the exploitation of women, literacy and disability. She would also sponsor a Citizen's Award for people who ‘give outstanding service to Irish life'—a proposal from the Citizenship Committee she had served on. She would open consultations on the 1916 centenary north and south, request the Government to extend the Freedom of Information Act to the Presidency, and publish annual accounts for the President's office. It was towards the end of the third page of her speech that media interest perked up.

She was referring to nine days earlier, 25 September, when the
Sunday Business Post
published a brief article that stated that the research company Amárach Consultants, regularly used by Fine Gael, had been testing negative messages about presidential election candidates. Later that day Fine Gael would formally and succinctly dismiss her claim: ‘These are surprising accusations by Ms Davis and it is hard to imagine where she got this idea.'

Davis continued:

After making the challenge, she went on to address one other issue in an attempt to distance herself from the charge that she was part of the establishment through her membership of politically appointed boards.

Then she took questions.

At the weekend she had been dubbed the ‘quango queen' because of a number of appointments to state boards, made, in the main, when Fianna Fáil was in power. The Independent.ie editorial said:

The following day's
Sunday Independent
published a column by Shane Ross
TD
that rammed home the same ‘quango queen' message. The label stuck, damagingly, to her campaign.

At the official launch some journalists carried a copy of that morning's
Irish Independent
, which included an article headlined ‘Davis and husband in storm over
PR
contract.' It was an ominous sign, and overshadowed the campaign launch. The article reported that the public relations company Fleishman-Hillard, of which Julian Davis (57)was a director, was awarded a
PR
contract by a charity on whose board the couple both sat. Social Entrepreneurs Ireland is funded by charitable donations, and its accounts for 2009 showed that it spent more than €40,000 in 2009 on public relations with Fleishman-Hillard and almost €30,000 on marketing and
PR
costs for the previous year. Julian and Mary Davis both joined the company shortly after it was set up in 2007. They were not paid fees for their role as directors.

The charity says it identifies, invests in and supports ‘social entrepreneurs' and the organisations they launch. In the same way that entrepreneurs develop companies that manufacture products or services and so generate a profit, ‘social entrepreneurs' create and run organisations that provide products and services to generate social and environmental return. Social Entrepreneurs Ireland holds an annual awards ceremony to present the work of Ireland's leading social entrepreneurs and to encourage others to become part of the growing social entrepreneurship movement.

The suggestion of a conflict of interest was denied by Julian Davis and the charity's chief executive, Seán Coughlan. ‘The Board was happy there was no conflict of interest, in the sense that the relationship started before either Julian or Mary got on the board,' he said. The board had discussed whether there was a conflict of interest on a number of occasions, the most recent being earlier that year.

Fleishman-Hillard was awarded the contract because it had previously worked with an associated charity, the One Foundation, since 2005. Mary Davis was a director of the One Foundation from 2006 to 2008. ‘It was discussed as part of the discussion on the new corporate governance code for
SEI
,' Coughlan explained. ‘No issue was raised regarding the current contract with Fleishman-Hillard.'

Julian Davis denied there was any conflict of interest, telling the
Irish Independent
that both he and his wife had excused themselves from board meetings when the public relations contract was discussed.

It was the first question thrown from the floor. She denied it. ‘There was no cronyism. I'd nothing to do with the awarding of the contract, and if there were any discussion in relation to the awarding of a contract, like a public relations contract, I was not a party to those discussions.'

There were a dozen questions from journalists. Only one referred to her speech, and that centred on her claim that she was being polled against. Who was carrying out a dirty tricks campaign? ‘It would appear to me from reports in the paper that it's driven by Fine Gael,' she replied bluntly.

Questioned further, she softened her tone, but the charge remained the same. ‘I would really like Fine Gael to come out and contradict that,' she said. ‘Gay Mitchell would seem to me to be a very decent person, so I don't know why political groups or any candidate would use negative polling in the way that it is being used. But I do know for a fact that it is being used.'

Her advisers were beginning to wonder whether she had even delivered a speech, as every subsequent question was about her board membership as a ‘quango queen'.

She denied she was an ‘insider', saying she had served on three state boards for payment and on three with no pay. Asked about the policy of the
ICS
Bank, of which she was a member, of giving 100 per cent mortgages at the height of the property boom, she said that they had taken collective decisions and that
ICS
was not involved in this practice to the same degree as other banks. Questioned about the six-figure earnings of the Dublin Airport Authority's chief executive, she said that again there was a collective decision.

Ronan O'Reilly of the
Daily Mail
, who wrote the observational column ‘Pres Watch', had witnessed Davis forge her way through the supportive crowd into the press launch. He wrote: ‘The members of the crowd themselves were of a sort to suggest that quite a few regular coffee mornings in Dublin's leafier suburbs were somewhat short of a quorum yesterday.' But by the conclusion of the press conference he clearly had a grudging admiration for Davis.

Later that day the chief executive of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland would tell the media that the public relations contract held by Fleishman-Hillard on a rolling basis would be put out to tender after the Social Entrepreneur Awards were held later in the month.

An avalanche of statements was issued that day, describing in detail the personal finances of a number of candidates. The most informative was a statement together with documents showing Martin McGuinness's income—and how he spent it. The Bank of Ireland's British unit released details of an account in the Strand Road Branch, Derry, jointly held by McGuinness and his wife. The manager stated that McGuinness received a monthly deposit of £1,605. The accounts, for March to September, had blanked-out references to cheques, personal debit details and balances but included details of purchases at Asda, Musgrave's, Tesco and the clothing stores
TK
Maxx and Foster's.

Personal finances were a continuing theme as reporters followed the money trail for stories. David Norris confirmed the same evening that he had received a disability payment for sixteen years while out of work as a lecturer in Trinity College. The payment began in 1994 and ended in July 2010, when he reached pension age. He received a pension from the college worth about €2,500 a month, the
Irish Independent
would report. He also received a senator's salary of €61,073 a year, supplemented by an unvouched Seanad allowance of €23,383.

Norris insisted that he was in perfect health and would not say what his disability was, but it would not stand in the way of his being President. In typically ebullient form he said:

Earlier, Michael D. Higgins had conducted a sprightly canvass in Grafton Street, Dublin. He too was asked by reporters about his income. Miriam Lord reported in the
Irish Times
that Higgins maintained a statesmanlike distance from the questioning about candidates' pasts. ‘It's getting ridiculous, as candidates fall over each other to account for every ha'penny they ever earned. It can only be a matter of time before they offer full details of their communion money.'

Asked about his finances, Higgins gave details of his pension and estimated the value of his house in Galway and what he earned from his literary efforts. ‘The two poetry books have been declared for tax purposes,' he said. Then he added with a sigh: ‘The income was minimal.'

Finances weren't the worry of his campaign team. Shaking hands with passers-by, meeting the flower-sellers on the street and the buskers, the campaign team then bumped into Stuart Gordon and his wife from the United States. They had watched ‘The Late Late Show' and had spotted the Higgins entourage in the Grafton Street canvass. Surrounded by reporters, Gordon revealed that he was an orthopaedic surgeon. Minders blanched: after questions about the candidate's age, here was an expert on his damaged knee, ready to give his instant diagnosis in front of the media. The question on everyone's lips was ‘Is the candidate fit?'

Higgins repeated the story he had told on ‘The Late Late Show': he was on a visit with an aid agency to Bogotá, Colombia, where he slipped on tiles and damaged his knee. ‘Did you have the kneecap tied with wire?' he was asked. Yes, confirmed the candidate. ‘It can be taken out later, yes, I'm galloping along now.'

‘He's vital and brave,' the surgeon told the media, and this was because of the wonders of modern orthopaedic surgery techniques and ‘because he has a lot of heart.'