CONSTITUENCY PROFILE:LIKE KERRY North-West, Limerick and Sligo-Leitrim North, Roscommon-Leitrim South is one of those geographically unsatisfactory constituencies that just doesn't seem to fit.
It’s a symptom of the impossibility of reconciling small populations and county boundaries.
Particularly affected is Leitrim, which has been split to become the butt-end of two constituencies.
Roscommon has had a bit of a raw deal too. It was lumped with the non-Connacht county of Longford across the river Shannon for a while.
Albert Reynolds’s local strategist Mickey Doherty once gloriously described the problems in terms of transfers in Longford-Roscommon: “Votes don’t swim.”
This was a new constituency four years ago and Fine Gael did remarkably well, winning two seats out of three.
Fianna Fáil almost did as well. Fine Gael won 39.13 per cent of the vote; Fianna Fáil won 38.84 per cent. Only 0.3 per cent separated them. And between them, they eclipsed everybody else.
Fianna Fáil is running two candidates for this election: its front runner Ivan Connaughton and Leitrim-based Gerry Kilrane, who will be the sweeper.
Connaughton is a good candidate and cannot be written off, but right now this constituency looks like another three-seater where Fianna Fáil will be shut out.
Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan, well placed in the north of Roscommon, is likely to top the poll, and the party’s south-Roscommon based Denis Naughten should also make it, though some of his supporters believe he may be pushed hard.
The battle for the last seat is intriguing. Connaughton will be in the hunt, but with three others, and at least two of them look stronger.
The first is Martin Kenny of Sinn Féin, who won almost 9 per cent of the vote the last time out. He will have to double his tally and expand his reach into Roscommon from his base in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, to be in with a chance.
Castlerea-based councillor John Kelly ran as an Independent candidate the last time, campaigning on the hospital issue. He polled over 4,000 votes.
When he joined Labour there were high hopes that he could press for a seat. Labour has no organisation or base to speak of here, however, and there are doubts about Kelly consolidating his support.
The biggest threat will come from an Independent – and there has been a long tradition of that in Roscommon. Luke “Ming” Flanagan has an off-centre image, but is a very canny politician with a strong base in Castlerea.
He has been to the forefront of the hospital campaign and that of local turf-cutters, although he found himself on a slightly more sticky wicket politically during the head shops controversy in Roscommon last year.
ROSCOMMON LEITRIM SOUTH: 3 SEATS
OUTGOING TDs:
Michael Finneran (FF), Frank Feighan (FG), Denis Naughten (FG).
CANDIDATES:
Ivan Connaughton (FF), Gerry Kilrane (FF), Denis Naughten (FG), Frank Feighan (FG), John Kelly (Lab), Garreth McDaid (GP), Martin Kenny (SF), Luke
"Ming" Flanagan (Ind), Sean Kearns (Ind), John McDermott (Ind).
LOCAL ISSUES:
Lack of employment is a huge issue in a county that did not benefit as much as elsewhere during the boom. Roscommon Hospital is a perennial issue, as are the rights of locals to extract turf from bogs which have EU protection status.
VERDICT:FG 2, Ind 1
