The Race for the Áras (30 page)

Five hundred homes, chosen at random and telephoned by professional researchers ‘using questions compiled by the editorial team at the
Sunday Independent
,' asked three other salient questions. Only 6 per cent of those questioned believed someone had tried to kill Dana. A total of 47 per cent felt that Gallagher hadn't dealt adequately with questions about his business affairs, while 51 per cent thought of Gallagher as a Fianna Fáil candidate.

That morning's
Irish Times
poll showed Gallagher at 40 per cent, with Higgins at 26 per cent. The poll was conducted among a national quota sample of 1,000 people in 100 sampling points around the country and was conducted within the guidelines laid down by the Marketing Society of Ireland and the European Society for Opinion and Market Research.

The political editor, Stephen Collins, analysed the results. The concentration on Gallagher's involvement with Fianna Fáil and his business dealings did not seem to have dented his lead, ‘but these issues could still influence voters in the last few days of the campaign.' In addition, his role in Fianna Fáil had also helped him, as he was picking up a massive share of the Fianna Fáil vote—but not at the cost of votes from people who support other parties.

Reaching the target vote of 12½ per cent had to be a priority for those trailing with less than 10 per cent in the opinion polls—Norris at 8 per cent, Mitchell at 6 per cent and Dana and Davis at 3 per cent—if they wanted to recover any election expenses as a rebate from the tax payer.

The three Sunday opinion polls prompted fierce debate in the Higgins camp. Should he go ‘negative' and increase the pressure on his only serious rival, Gallagher? He was advised to do so. He took the advice to heart and launched a blistering attack on Gallagher when he met journalists on a canvass in Grafton Street on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon with the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore. ‘I am a hundred miles from the Celtic Tiger,' he said, describing himself as someone who had never had a share, who had never had a company. ‘It's all in the public realm, every single aspect of what I do: what I own, what I am, what I do, my history … Why did I offer myself? Because I love Ireland.'

Higgins was reverting to type after a disciplined campaign of concentrating on short sound-bite answers. ‘I am saying that I am more substantial and I am clearly the better candidate. We stand for a different version of Ireland.' Voters would focus on what both he and Gallagher had been doing for the past fifteen years.

Higgins said he had made the case against the excesses of the ‘Celtic Tiger' and the property boom in the Dáil and had voted against the unlimited bank guarantee.

The following day's front page of the
Irish Daily Mail
characterised his attack as ‘Higgins has meltdown'.

Chapter
14
   
STEWARDS' INQUIRY

‘W
hat have you added to the knowledge of the people about the Presidency? With the questions you put to us tonight, what is that all about?' an enraged Gay Mitchell asked Pat Kenny on the live ‘Frontline' television debate.

It was clear that the pressures of the campaign had prompted the tirade. Mitchell was languishing in the polls, and his own party was not delivering its national poll popularity to his campaign. He had been campaigning on serious issues, understood the role and both the limits and the requirements of the Constitution—and he was being asked what he considered an irrelevant, fatuous question.

Hundreds of thousands of voters, the biggest television debate audience, were watching, and he was arguing with the moderator—not with the other candidates—to win the hearts and minds of the viewers.

Standing behind a wooden lectern in a line with the other candidates, he prodded the air with his finger and unleashed his tirade, driven by weeks of frustration. It was Monday night, the polls would open on the following Thursday, and vital, valuable time was ticking away.

The straw that broke the camel's back was a question about the businessman Denis O'Brien, which was followed by a question to all the candidates, Would you appoint him to the Council of State? Earlier Mitchell had been asked about his own poll rating and said for the umpteenth time that he thought the opinion polls were inaccurate. He asked:

Kenny was equally robust in his response.

Then, most tellingly, Kenny went to the heart of the need for public scrutiny of the presidential candidates.

On the online version of the
Irish Independent
at
www.independent.ie
the former
Sunday Tribune
columnist Diarmuid Doyle reviewed the ‘Frontline' programme.

 

In Killarney on the morning of Monday the 24th, Mary Davis, who was trailing in the opinion polls in joint last position with Dana, was the first out of the traps to open fire on the poll leader, Gallagher, saying the race was far from over. ‘I absolutely think I can turn things around,' she said. ‘I think a lot of people are undecided, and they are still waiting.'

Coverage of her membership of state boards had damaged her campaign, and some of the stories were very unfair, she contended.

Asked about Gallagher, she said that all candidates had to stand on their record.

But while Kenny had lit a fire under Mitchell, it was McGuinness who would take the central role in directing the content of the ‘Frontline' debate, a riveting television production that was to shape the news agenda for the coming days and as time ran out for the candidates, with voting just over forty-eight hours away.

Earlier in the day a joint Google-Newstalk debate, hosted live from noon on the web and on the radio station, gave a clue to a new strategy that McGuinness would adopt with devastating effect later that evening.

The debate, moderated by the bookmaker and former Fine Gael Minister for Agriculture Ivan Yates, who jointly presented the morning news programme, put questions to candidates that had been posted on the internet, which included such diverse topics as religion, the Constitution, same-sex marriages and the candidate's vision for Ireland.

McGuinness waded into the debate, saying he had no doubt that the poll-topping Gallagher had strong links to Fianna Fáil.

Yates, a combative and provocative interviewer on his breakfast show, was in top form for the debate. Referring to the latest opinion polls, which showed Higgins now trailing Gallagher, he thundered at Higgins: ‘This was your election to lose and you've lost it,' he charged.

Slightly taken aback but retaining his calm air, Higgins responded: ‘Well, that's the kind of comment that makes no sense at all. I think Thursday will decide that.'

Despite the blunt questioning, Higgins emerged as the winner in a post-debate opinion poll conducted in association with the Economic and Social Research Institute. He achieved 38 per cent of the vote; Gallagher and McGuinness both won 20 per cent, with Norris picking up 11 per cent. Mitchell achieved 6 per cent, Davis 3 per cent and Dana 2 per cent.

There was now just seven hours to prepare for the final televised debate of what had been a treadmill campaign of interviews and debates. For Higgins it would be a last chance to pull ahead in public opinion, which pundits thought might be showing a ‘soft' lead for Gallagher, who would revert to his leading position and claim the keys to the Áras.

For Gallagher it was all about staying ahead, safe and sound. He would spend two hours with his advisers preparing for the debate in his four-storey head office in St Stephen's Green and in the Conrad Hotel. ‘I was like a yo-yo running up and down the stairs during the campaign,' his media adviser Richard Moore would recall. ‘What we really needed to co-ordinate the team was an open-plan office.'

There had been a shift in the focus of the campaign. The media were taking an increasing interest in Gallagher, who had suddenly been propelled into lead position despite little being known about him. His associations with Fianna Fáil and his business dealings would come under increased scrutiny.

A straw in the wind was that morning's editorial in the
Irish Times
and the
Evening Herald
's front page, which bluntly asked: ‘Who is he? Key questions around the presidential favourite Seán Gallagher.' Under the heading ‘Mr Gallagher eyes the prize' it wrote:

The
Herald
's lead story was more of an editorial than a hard news story.

Perhaps ominously it added: ‘Full story: pages 2, 3 and 12 and 13.'

The page 2 story said:

Before the
Herald
hit the newsagents, voting had begun on the islands; soldiers serving overseas had already begun voting. The 760 voters on Tory, Gola, Aranmore, Inishbofin and Inishfree off the Donegal coast were the first islanders to vote that day. Ballot boxes were transported by helicopter, boat and ferry. Voting would continue on Inishbiggle, Inishturk, the Aran Islands and Clare Island the following day and on Wednesday, while islanders off the Cork coast would vote on the Thursday with mainland voters.

That evening, speaking direct to camera after the nine o'clock
RTE
1 news, Pat Kenny teed up his incipient drama, like an ‘
X
Factor' promotion, with the dramatic introduction but without the show's trademark booming voice:

Fifteen minutes into the debate, after the candidates' opening statements, McGuinness launched his attack on Gallagher.

He waited for the applause to die down before announcing that a few hours before he arrived at
RTE
he was contacted by a man who had been one of a group of between thirty and thirty-five people who

It was a bombshell, saying in effect that Gallagher was a senior member of the party he had distanced himself from as a junior member, and it associated him with the discredited culture of political donations that had marred political parties.

Kenny turned to Gallagher to allow him to respond, prompting: ‘You're as thick as thieves with Fianna Fáil, and you're trying to deny it?'

‘Can I tell you, Pat, that I've met you about as many times as I've met Brian Cowen,' responded Gallagher. Kenny cut across him to say that was just twice, so.

Gallagher went on to say that he had served on the party's Organisational Committee and went to two meetings in 2009 with the sole ambition of seeking to get support for business written into legislation.

Kenny referred to a story in that morning's
Irish Independent
that cited Gallagher's self-proclaimed association with the former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey and his experience of working in his campaign for election to the Fianna Fáil Ard-Chomhairle. Gallagher explained that he had met Haughey when he worked with Young Fianna Fáil in his early twenties, which prompted his decision to study in Maynooth to become a youth worker.

He explained that the fund-raising event in the summer of 2008 in Dundalk was set up by Fianna Fáil head office and that he had been asked, as a local businessman, to inform people about the event. ‘I invited perhaps three or four,' he said.

But McGuinness repeated his charge about the fund-raising event and the cheque for €5,000.

Gallagher denied it. ‘Not true,' he said.