The Race for the Áras (33 page)

‘Why were you “shell-shocked” when a journalist came to your campaign team last week and said that these allegations had been made by Hugh Morgan in Armagh?'

‘Hugh Morgan said that I had collected a cheque in advance of—and I am quite clear, and Mr Morgan said in his statement that he wrote a cheque on the 27th when I visited the premises. Fianna Fáil are saying here in their statement that the cheque was written on the 26th and was lodged.'

‘It's dated on the 26th, they said. Incidentally, they don't tell us how the cheque was delivered to Fianna Fáil headquarters, whether it arrived in the post or whether it was delivered personally, or whether you went in with it as the Fianna Fáil bagman.'

‘I wasn't a Fianna Fáil bagman. The organisation—headquarters—had organised this event. I let some business people know about it. I did not collect a cheque off Mr Morgan and—and Mr McGuinness's attempt last night was an absolute slur and is what I have been dealing with, Bryan, for the last week and a half, allegation after allegation in an attempt, solely because I am now leading in the polls.'

‘Mr Morgan says that he never met you before, he didn't know you when you made this approach—it was a cold call, if you like, to see if he'd come along, because the cheque—'

‘Somebody had given me his name.'

‘Presumably when you phoned him up you did tell him there would be a donation of five thousand euros expected to attend this?'

‘Well, I was asked to say that there was a level of up to five thousand euros. I have no idea—'

‘That's what you told him?'

‘Correct.'

‘That he would pay five thousand for this?'

‘Up to.'

‘But previously your spokesman said you did not solicit a donation for Fianna Fáil. That's not true, is it?'

‘That's not true. What I said was that there was a fund-raising event happening, and if he'd like to come along he could make a donation.'

‘Right. And that doesn't count as soliciting? No?'

‘I'm saying that that's what I said.'

‘Is that not soliciting a donation?'

‘It could be.'

‘Then why did your spokesman say you did not solicit a donation?'

‘Well, I'm not sure what my spokesman said, but I'm telling you now exactly what I said.'

‘I'll give you the exact quote,' said Dobson. Reading the paper on his desk, he continued: ‘Your spokesman said that “at no point did he actively solicit any donations. He would have been in touch with a number of people he knew, to tell them it was on”, only to discover you didn't know Mr Morgan—so that's not true either.'

‘Let me clarify this. I asked a number of business people in the area did they want to attend, and one of them obviously recommended Mr Morgan as somebody who might like to attend.'

‘So you did ask people you didn't know, it now turns out.'

‘I did ask people I did know, and if they recommended somebody else that they knew. And so—'

Dobson honed in on the admission. ‘So you did invite people you didn't know, and you did solicit a donation from at least one of those people?'

‘This was a fund-raising event, and I informed anybody that I rang that there was a level up to which they could nominate or donate, and that they would make that payable to Fianna Fáil headquarters.'

Dobson sat back in his seat and softened his tone. ‘None of this is remarkable at all. It's what you'd expect anybody who is involved in a political party to do after an election, to try and rebuild the party coffers: ring around people who have assets and say, “Will you come along and support us?” You were doing what any other senior political Fianna Fáil figure would do?'

Gallagher wasn't relaxing. ‘I wasn't a senior figure.'

‘You were a campaign director for the
TD
at the time.'

‘I had been in 2007. I was quite happy to assist in this event by inviting local business people. The allegation is made that there is something corrupt. The cheque was made out to Fianna Fáil.'

‘The allegation is that you haven't been telling the truth, Mr Gallagher. That's the allegation.'

‘No, not at all.'

‘There is no allegation of corruption. The allegation is that you haven't been telling the truth. There is no allegation of corruption here at all.'

‘I always tell the truth, and anyone who knows and has watched my campaign knows two things: that I do not get involved in negative campaigning, and I always tell the truth—always.'

There the interview ended.

It had been a forensic interrogation by a skilled interviewer, who had got his subject to admit to telling two untruths, about recruiting potential donors and then soliciting money.

 

Gallagher's attack on the motivation of Glenna Lynch made him appear bullying and unwilling to take questions from a member of the public about his financial dealings, which had been a smouldering controversy over the last days of the campaign. The crucial question now was, with a fifteen-point lead in the opinion polls, had he done enough to maintain that lead with the public—or was his campaign damaged beyond repair?

Credibility is a central characteristic required by a presidential candidate, and already political pundits were openly saying he was damaged. How much? was the question.

A broadcast moratorium was due to take effect from 2 p.m. the following day, which would end all radio and
TV
broadcast discussion and speculation about the election. For Gallagher the moratorium was a two-edged sword. It shut down debate and exposure on the airwaves; and that would be a positive if he had satisfactorily answered his critics and explained his case fully. The question remained: had he fudged or left questions unanswered? Only the electorate would answer those questions definitively.

Political commentators had a sense of
déjà vu
as Gallagher contradicted his own version of events. In the midst of the October 1990 presidential election campaign the Fianna Fáil nominee and front runner Brian Lenihan (senior) had denied that he had tried to contact the President eight years earlier to urge him not to dissolve the Dáil. However, a postgraduate politics student and journalist, Jim Duffy, produced a tape to the
Irish Times
that recorded Lenihan agreeing that he had phoned the Áras.

Lenihan's campaign imploded. He tried to rescue it by going on the six o'clock
TV
news, when he memorably said that ‘on mature reflection' he recalled that he had in fact phoned the Áras. His campaign collapsed, and almost overnight his popularity plummeted by eighteen points in the opinion polls. He was subsequently sacked as a minister by the Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, and the presidential race was won by Mary Robinson.

The following morning's papers, on the eve of voting, confirmed Gallagher's worst fears. The onslaught was changing public opinion. Two opinion polls put Higgins as the favoured candidate. Boylesports carried out an opinion poll in the wake of the ‘Frontline' programme that had 47 per cent saying they would trust Michael D. Higgins and 44 per cent that they would not trust Seán Gallagher as President.

A total of 28 per cent of those surveyed said the debate changed their minds on who they would vote for; 34 per cent would give Higgins their number 1, and 25 per cent would give Gallagher their number 1, and 24 per cent would prefer McGuinness.

Ballotbox.ie, which campaigns for the extension of voting rights to the Irish diaspora, published an opinion poll it had conducted over the previous six days. A total of 2,581 people took part. Higgins took 40 per cent of first preferences, Norris came second, with 24 per cent, McGuinness polled 18 per cent, while Gallagher polled 10 per cent. Mitchell and Davis scored 3 per cent each and Dana 1 per cent.

The web site required voters to provide their passport details to ensure they were eligible to participate in the real vote. Voters from the Republic were blocked with a firewall, but votes were recorded from countries as diverse as England, Australia, Canada, the United States, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Yemen and Kazakhstan. The poll was carried out with no specific reference to the ‘Frontline' programme, but its result added to a growing swell of support for Higgins.

The
Irish Times
had dedicated two full pages to letters to the editor, and they ranged across the spectrum of public opinion, whether indignant, entertaining, questioning or whimsical. A serial correspondent on political matters was David Carroll, a pharmacist and political activist from Boyle, Co. Roscommon.

The last opinion poll of the day was published shortly before the broadcasting moratorium began. Today
FM
's hugely popular ‘Ray D'Arcy Show' opened the text lines, asking listeners: Who will you be voting for tomorrow?

The mid-morning show recorded 249,000 listeners in the most recent audience figures released shortly before the election, only 30,000 behind its competitor, Pat Kenny's ‘Today Show' on
RTE
—figures that showed the significant reach to voting audiences. A total of 5,414 votes were cast. As it was a text vote, there could be multiple votes by supporters or even organised groups of supporters. The result, however, was instructive.

Mitchell came last, with 2½ per cent, Dana was slightly ahead with 3 per cent, while Davis scored 5 per cent and Norris 9½ per cent, which would suggest that they would not receive state funding for their election bid. Above the threshold was McGuinness, polling at 18 per cent, Higgins at 28 per cent and Gallagher topping the poll at 33½ per cent—a lead, but a much-eroded one that could see Higgins win on transfers.

Fergus Finlay, a former Labour Party contender, in his eve-of-poll
Evening Herald
column wrote that

Finlay said he believed that McGuinness's intervention would not win him the election, and that

He went on to endorse Higgins.

Below the Finlay article the
Herald
published the feature Gallagher had written the previous day in the midst of the ‘Frontline' storm. Gallagher's fury and bitterness breathed like a dragon's fire from the text. He raged in a vitriolic attack on Sinn Féin and a personal attack on McGuinness, rather than another attempt to explain the issues.

The programme had produced a political ambush,

Across the central fold of the paper the
Herald
devoted an unprecedented page to an editorial and a cartoon that excoriated McGuinness. The cartoon, published previously with an Eoghan Harris magazine article, was of McGuinness with an automatic rifle in one hand, money and a pistol poking out from his pockets, holding a Tricolour that had a clenched fist on the central panel, and displaying a devil's tail. A balaclava lay on the floor in front of him. The message was blunt.