CANDIDATE SELECTION:EFFORTS BY members of the Fine Gael parliamentary party to cut the influence of party grassroots over the selection of candidates were opposed at the ardfheis.
A number of Fine Gael TDs, led by Galway West TD Pádraic McCormack, had wanted to curb the one-member, one-vote system used to select candidates.
Under one motion, the first 20 members of a branch would have a vote each, but each subsequent five would have to share a vote.
However, the increasing centralisation of power over candidate selection has begun seriously to annoy the grassroots in both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in recent months.
The rule-change proposals due for debate on Saturday morning were pulled following late-night talks between the parliamentary party and the party’s executive council.
Put in place by John Bruton in 1996, the system gives all party members of eight weeks’ standing a vote in all selection conventions.
Since then, attendances and competition for places at conventions for the party have increased significantly, although tempers have risen at times.
An outspoken supporter of the voting system, Young Fine Gael president Barry Walsh said the effort to change the one-member, one-vote rule was “scandalous”.
He said the one-member, one-vote rule had been “an inconvenience” for TDs. “It’s no secret that TDs want to have as much control as possible over selections. That’s human nature.”
Questioned yesterday, party leader Enda Kenny insisted that the motions were put off simply because “an hour wasn’t going to be enough at all”.
“When people start to debate rules and rights, branches and responsibilities, it can get very convoluted.
“I have been very happy with the one-man, one-vote. Others have different views on these things. The conventions that have been held over the last eight or 10 years have been brilliant from an atmospheric point of view, from the point of views of numbers turning up. It causes difficulties in some constituencies.”
Acknowledging that some parliamentary party colleagues do not like the system, he said: “If you took a vote within the PP they may not all support . many of them are the result of one-man, one-vote.”
Mr Kenny said a commission would report back on the options available in coming months.
The motions were put aside after “some manoeuvring” on Friday night between members of the parliamentary party and the executive council, said the chairman of the executive council John Delamere.
“It was felt that a special delegate conference was required. This goes to the fundamental heart of the party. The majority of the membership would be generally happy with the system,” he told The Irish Times.
However, the executive council itself had to withdraw a number of motions it had put forward which would have given it powers to order conventions to select candidates “with such geographical, or other considerations as may be determined by the executive council; such other considerations may include, without limitation, incumbency”.
Meanwhile, delegates rejected by a four-to-one margin a motion from Roscommon Town branch urging that it end national collection at church gates.
