By Chris Ashmore
SINN Féin and Fianna Fáil will both win two seats while the 100% Redress Party will take one in the five-seat Donegal constituency in this month’s general election – that’s the prediction of high-profile broadcaster, businessman and former Agriculture Minister Ivan Yates.
And by making this selection, he is also predicting that Fine Gael will get no seat in the county and outgoing Independent TD Thomas Pringle will miss out.
Profiling the Donegal constituency as part of the Newstalk radio station’s general election podcasts, the straight-talking Yates outlined the reasoning behind how he is calling it in Donegal.
The former Fine Gael minister began with a look at Sinn Féin, and said that there is “no question” regarding the re-election of deputies Pearse Doherty and Padraig MacLochlainn.
While he felt their vote could drop they will both “sail home”.
Asked by Sean Defoe, Newstalk’s political correspondent – who is co-hosting the series – whether Sinn Féin could take three seats, Yates responded: “It is out the window, absolutely”.
Turning to the scrap for the other three seats, he began with an assessment of how Fine Gael are likely to fare in Donegal, Yates was typically blunt in his assessment of the party’s chances of taking a seat in Donegal, and remarked on how they had got “obliterated” in the local elections in the county, ending up with 11 per cent of the vote and just three councillors on the 37-seat council.
“The situation is it could not be worse for Fine Gael,” he declared, and felt that the party’s “succession plan” for the retiring Joe McHugh (who has been a TD since 2007) will not work.
The party is running two candidates, John McNulty and Senator Nikki Bradley.
But Yates added: “Fine Gael have no chance of a seat and are not in the frame”.
He then turned to the 100% Redress Party and pointed out that they did “really well” in the local elections, winning four seats, and said that their candidate Charles Ward “is in the frame” for a seat.
Regarding Fianna Fáil, he warned that Agriculture Minister Charlie McConologue is in danger of losing his seat – although in the final analysis he opted to go for the Inishowen-based politician to take the fifth and final seat, and thereby retaining his Dáil presence, at the expense of Pringle.
Yates felt that Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher “would not be going unless he felt he had a viable chance of winning” and pointed out that back in 2019 there was only around 400 votes between the aforementioned and McConalogue.
“Pat ‘the Cope’ is in it to win it,” he stated.
Tipping Charles Ward of the 100% Redress Party for the fourth seat, he felt that the final seat will boil down to a battle between Pringle and McConalogue.
He noted that Pringle “always exceeds expectations” on the day of the vote, but felt that McConolague will “get out every single last (Fianna Fáil) vote and that the party will run a “tidy campaign” and take the last seat.
Elaborating, he was of the opinion that while McConalogue “has taken most of the flack for mica” there will have been different projects and capital expenditure that he will have delivered on, and for farmers, and all together will have “enough to hang on”.
Defoe, in his verdict, agreed on the two incumbent Sinn Féin TDs being returned and also went for Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher for Fianna Fáil.
The last two seats, he reckoned, will be between McConalogoue, Pringle and Ward.
He did question, however, whether Charles Ward had been the right candidate for the 100% Redress Party to run. Like Yates had alluded to earlier in the podcast, he felt that the 100% Redress Party had “picked the wrong guy in the wrong part of the constituency”.
Concluding, Yates felt that those in mica-affected homes were not going to miss the opportunity to elect a TD.