Waterford promises to be a bellwether constituency in Election 2024, a sign of Sinn Féin’s potential to lead the next government or for Fine Gael to remain there.
Fine Gael must win a seat in this four-seat constituency to be in contention for government and Sinn Féin need the two seats as part of its bid to lead the next administration.
Simon Harris’s campaign tussle with Kanturk care worker Charlotte Fallon has hurt Fine Gael in the polls and confidence is growing in Sinn Féin due to improved polling numbers.
In Waterford, Fine Gael candidate Senator John Cummins (37) says he is not feeling any extra pressure since the major misstep by his party leader.
“The reaction on the door has been quite similar to what I have been receiving over the last number of weeks,” the former PE teacher says.
He is hopeful it won’t affect his vote.
“One thing you could never accuse Simon Harris of is not having a commitment to disability services,” he says.
During a canvass of the middle-class area around John’s Hill, the matter is raised just once.
The candidate is canvassing with his father, former Seanad leader Maurice Cummins, who is recognised by a lot of older voters, including Henry Flynn who refers to the Kanturk incident.
Of Harris’s handling of the incident, Flynn says: “He made a gaffe there, didn’t he? He’ll get over it but it’s a pity because it went viral as well.”
On a Sinn Féin canvass, the issue comes up just once for Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane (50).
“Harris is after shooting himself in the foot now – make the most of it,” says Pat Cox, as he and his wife, Phil, chat with Cullinane on their doorstep.
For Fine Gael the pressure is huge to recover the seat the party lost in 2020, when it ran two candidates and split the vote. Cummins lost out but now he is the party’s sole candidate.
Sinn Féin had the opposite problem. Cullinane topped the poll with almost 40 per cent of the vote and almost two quotas. As the only Sinn Féin candidate, his huge surplus helped elect Green Party TD Marc Ó Cathasaigh and contributed to Independent TD Matt Shanahan’s success.
After bucking the trend at the local elections and winning 21 per cent of the vote compared to 11 per cent nationally, Sinn Féin is running two candidates.
“It’s a perfect geographical split,” says Cullinane. He has the city areas and his colleague, councillor Conor McGuinness, has the west of the county.
All four outgoing TDs are running: Cullinane, Fianna Fáil’s Mary Butler, Shanahan and Ó Cathasaigh. Cummins and McGuinness make it six candidates running for four seats, with the Green Party TD facing a major hurdle to be a contender.
“There’s nobody putting me under pressure to win the two seats,” says Cullinane, who is confident of the party’s chances.
“We forced Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to stand one candidate each. There’s very few constituencies where there’s only one Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael candidate and in my view that’s because of the threat Sinn Féin poses,” says the party’s health spokesman.
On the Fine Gael canvass the campaign team includes Sinn Féin-turned-Independent councillor Declan Clune who left the party in 2020.
“There was no one particular thing. It was a build-up over time,” he says of leaving Sinn Féin. “There wasn’t much room for having an alternative view and you’d be kind of isolated and undermined.”
At one door, Cummins declines to say where a voter’s second choice should go, just his number one.
Local man Gerard Fitzgerald says he has “zero confidence” in Sinn Féin’s numbers because “they have all this hidden stuff like this wealth tax, which they’ve taken off but they’re still adding it in at the bottom”. He plans to go “with the tried to trusted”.
Jill and Joe Gallagher on John’s Hill are confirmed supporters of Cummins.
“I would know John since back when we were teenagers. He was always someone who could be trusted,” says Jill. He supports local business and “they don’t all do that”.
In an estate off John’s Hill, Anne Heine inherited her house from her aunt but is concerned about the tax “as a single person, not married, no children”.
Back on the Sinn Féin canvass, Ann Rogers asks: “What are you going to do for the workers?” She says all she ever hears about is “everyone on social welfare”.
Cullinane says the party will abolish the universal social charge (USC) for the first €45,000 of a person’s salary and will also provide €10 a day for childcare.
Bridget Douglas assures Cullinane of her vote “because I know him very well and he’ll do something for us – hopefully”.
“I’m all right but a lot of people don’t have what I have,” she says.
Terry Whiteman, originally from the UK, doesn’t vote because he doesn’t understand the Irish system.
“I don’t understand the parties here – Fianna Fáil and all the rest of them. I haven’t got a clue,” he says.
Asked how long he’s living in Ireland, he says: “26 years,” to laughter.
“That’s enough time” to learn about the system Cullinane suggests. “Maybe I’d vote for Fine Gael; I don’t know,” says Whiteman. “Someone said to me they’d be similar to the Conservatives.”
Cullinane says that if Sinn Féin can harness the vote he thinks is in west Waterford, they can win two seats.
“We have the balance right. We’ve been ambitious where we need to be and where potential seats can be gained,” he says.
“But even on 20 per cent we can still make gains,” he says of Sinn Féin’s opinion poll standing. “Anything above that then we can at least win those seats we left behind the last time. And there was at least 10 of those that we could say were low-lying fruit.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
- Sign up to our Inside Politics newsletter to get the behind-the-scenes take direct to your inbox
