REFERENDUM TRAIL: Former ceann comhairle John O'Donoghue finds majority on his side as he campaigns in Killorglin
THE HOME of Puck Fair will be backing the fiscal treaty: at least that was the message coming across in a referendum canvass by former ceann comhairle and justice minister John O’Donoghue in Killorglin yesterday.
The festival has been held on the same three days in August for more than 400 years and a mountain goat called King Puck is enthroned above the town for everyone to gaze upon.
O’Donoghue knows what it is to be held up to public scrutiny following his unplanned departure as speaker of Dáil Éireann following a series of revelations about expenses.
“I have two choices,” he says, “I can lie down and die or get up and fight and I’m going to get up and fight.”
At the moment he is fighting for a Yes vote on the fiscal treaty but in the longer term he plans to win back the Dáil seat he lost in last year’s general election.
The golden age of after-Mass meetings and rallies may be over in Ireland but standing outside a church is still a valuable method of making contact with the electorate.
Patrick Rochfort is voting for the treaty: “We’ll vote Yes, we’ll go with the flow.”
Sheep farmer Michael Coffey is also on the Yes side: “It’s the only way.”
It is looking as if the No voters have gone into hiding at the sight of O’Donoghue.
Eileen Crowley knows what side she’s on: “Yes – because it’s the best thing for Ireland.”
She compares the European Union to a housing estate: the Germans have been model residents but then others came along and caused a mess which has to be put right.
While No voters may be scarce there is a fair number of Don’t Knows. Noreen O’Reilly is still thinking things over: “I have not decided yet.” But she is leaning in a pro-treaty direction: “We’re such a small little country.”
At the open-air market in the Fairfield car park across the road, Jimmy Moriarty is selling “everything from a needle to an anchor”. He is voting Yes because of O’Donoghue: “I want to give this man a hand.”
Artist Kate Landers, who used to work in this newspaper, says she is undecided and, pointing to O’Donoghue, says: “I’m looking to this man to persuade me to vote Yes.”
Katherine McCarthy hasn’t made up her mind on the treaty. Like others, she says: “It’s very hard to understand it.” Her friend Betty O’Shea is also undecided: “I won’t know till the day.”
After Killorglin, O’Donoghue stops off at the Beaufort Arms to canvass Fianna Fáil veteran Pádraig O’Sullivan who first joined the party in 1939 at the age of 17. He’s backing the treaty because “it’s the right thing to do if we want to get money”.
