Clare Daly assembles all-star team to rally support in Dublin Central's 'group of death'

Sitting TDs Gary Gannon (Social Democrats) and Neasa Hourigan (Green Party) were in stiff competition with Fianna Fáil’s Mary Fitzpatrick (who has Bertie Ahern knocking doors with her, 2007 hatchet buried) and Labour senator Marie Sherlock. Ms McDonald’s running mate Janice Boylan is in contention. And that was before Clare Daly entered the race.

Ms Daly’s interactions with the media have been... spiky, we’ll say. After she lost her European seat in June at the RDS, she declined to speak the media, saying it had “no interest” in her for five years, which is not strictly true. 

Much of Ms Daly’s coverage here while in Brussels focused on her outlook on international events— her votes against EU resolutions on Ukraine in particular (Ms Daly says that her position on Ukraine is identical to her position on Gaza — she is an anti-war peace activist).

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But having been convinced by local activists to throw her hat in the ring in Dublin Central, she is focused on the local, rather than the international. Yesterday, she assembled an all-star team to back her campaign in the Clonliffe House, a local pub most known to many for its proximity to the Cusack Stand of Croke Park. 

In the pub’s back snug, Dublin City councillor Cieran Perry, former Green MEP Patricia McKenna, GAA legend David Hickey, and civil rights icon Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, all spoke of Ms Daly’s qualities, of her fighting spirit, and of the need to build “a movement” around her election.

Ms Daly laid out a vision for taking “the Gregory seat” in a constituency that had an independent TD from 1982 to 2020. Ms Devlin McAliskey spoke about a movement needed and led by someone with “sharp elbows”.

“Our campaign is building a movement, and electoral politics are just part of that,” Ms Daly said.

And my attitude to electoral politics, and what I’ve always done when elected, is to try and use those platforms as a vehicle to organise on to highlight the struggles and the concerns of people in their everyday lives.

The message is clear: This is the Clare Daly who went to prison over bin taxes, who was elected to the Dáil, who went to Brussels, whatever you think about her international stances. 

Asked if those issues were coming up on the doors, it was Geraldine Molloy, a local community activist, who took up the response: “I think the people here in the central area of Dublin, their biggest struggles in life are so huge that they can’t be thinking about Europe.

“Anybody I would speak to, my neighbours, friends, community, their struggles are here in the city, Dublin. Their struggles are homeless children who are not getting services for their health, autistic children, ADHD kids who are not getting help. Those people can’t even think beyond Dublin. Never mind beyond the rest of Europe or the rest of the world.”