NEWBRIDGE, 5 July 2001: by Brian Byrne. Newbridge Fianna Fail town commissioner Pat Black has called on senior people within the party to ‘restore discipline’ in County Kildare cumanns before calling the next election, likely to happen any time from April.
Black is one of three FF public representatives in three towns who have been effectively ‘shafted’ by colleagues for positions at AGMs in local administrations, and he says it bodes ill for the party in the county if there’s already such signs of disunity and backstabbing.
Black was due to take the chair at Newbridge Town Commission on Tuesday night, under long-standing arrangements since the formation of the current commission. But party colleagues outgoing chair Fiona O’Loughlin (right) and Colm Feeney instead sided with independent Murt Aspell and recently-returned-to-Labour’s Seamie Finn to have Fianna Fail’s Ray O’Brien (below) elected instead.
As reported yesterday, Black withdrew his nomination at the last minute when faced with a situation that could have split the party, despite the fact that two Fine Gael commissioners were supporting him for the chair.
“I made it clear that I was only withdrawing because I didn’t want to split the party, unlike some of my own party colleagues at the table,” he told KNN last night. “But I’m not impressed with the situation, particularly as Ray O’Brien is a former independent and PD member, and I wouldn’t consider him a real Fianna Fail man at all.”
Black, who has served for many years in senior local positions in Fianna Fail, and who comes from a family background rooted in the foundation of the party, is extremely upset at how he has been treated. His disappointment is known to be shared by the senior Fianna Fail representative in the county, recently new chair of Kildare County Council John O’Neill.
The Fianna Fail problems commenced last week when John Lawlor was refused his party’s support for the vice-chair of Athy UDC at the last minute, although the Fianna Fail members had a prior arrangement to share the offices through the life of the council. Earlier in the year, Lawlor had gone against the party line on the controversial Athy Inner Relief Road.
And on Tuesday night, new Naas UDC chairman Willie Callaghan refused to support fellow Fianna Fail party man Charlie Byrne (right) for the vice-chair of the authority, opting instead to support PD and former Labour member Timmy Conway to the position.
Earlier in what had been a rancorous preliminary to the AGM, Byrne had voted against a sale of the Sallins Road UDC car park to developer Tom Treacy, siding unsuccessfully with Labour and independent members in opposition to the sale against Callaghan, FG’s Pat O’Reilly, Conway, and independents Seamie Moore and Evelyn Bracken.
Byrne appears to have been effectively ostracised by his local party colleagues since he took a stand against the controversial and Flood Tribunal-notified Naas Development Plan passed just prior to the 1999 local elections.
©2001brianbyrne/knn