Last week was a momentous one for Mayo TD Alan Dillon, who was elevated to the role of Junior Minister in his first term as a TD for the Mayo constituency.
The new Taoiseach Simon Harris surprised many when he chose Dillon as the Minister of State with responsibility for Local Government and Planning, but Dillon’s star has most definitely risen in the past 18 months. He will now have a busy itinerary for the remainder of this Government’s term.
His colleague Michael Ring has gone on the record as stating that he turned down two offers of a junior ministry by Harris. In an interview on Mid West Radio, Ring said the Taoiseach made it clear that he wanted a guarantee from his junior ministers that they were definitely running in the next general election – and that he was not in a position to give this guarantee at present.
It seems Ring could be about to call time on a long political career. Should he not run, he will leave a huge void for Fine Gael in the county.
Ring has always been a very high vote-getter, and in the last general election his poll-topping performance of 14,796 votes was phenomenal.
Indeed, were it not for the Sinn Féin surge in that election, Ring would have polled much higher.
The then Minister for Rural and Community Development was the only Fine Gael candidate to top the poll in the country. It was the second time he was elected on the first count, having also done so during the blue tsunami of 2011, when Fine Gael took four of the five seats in Mayo.
Huge task
If Ring chooses not to run, Fine Gael is faced with the huge task of having to find a candidate to replace him and retain his seat.
A lot may well depend on how the local and European elections go for the party in June. The Fine Gael team of candidates for the forthcoming local elections launched their election campaign at the Michael Davitt Museum last week.
The party is running a large team of 15 candidates in an effort wrest back control of the council from Fianna Fáil and Independents. How they fair may well dictate who could be in line to run in the Westport area in the general election if Deputy Ring decides to retire.
Cllr Peter Flynn is a very experienced councillor who may well throw his hat into the ring for the general election, and it will be intriguing to see how first-time candidate Keira Keogh performs.
If Keogh were to be elected, she might well fit the Fine Gael profile for a shot at a seat in the Dáil. She is young and ambitious, and if she were to be anointed by Deputy Ring as his potential successor, she could well be a serious contender in the constituency.
It must be remembered that Alan Dillon looked very unlikely to take the last seat for most of the count in the last general election.
Dillon was in sixth place after the first count but never let running mate Michelle Mulherin or Fianna Fáil’s Lisa Chambers get too far ahead of him in the race for the fourth seat.
His first preference vote was just 5,198. That was the lowest first preference vote to take a seat in Mayo since 1992, when Seamus Hughes took a seat for Fianna Fáil in West Mayo with just 4,401 votes.
If Michael Ring does retire, then Dillon would expect to significantly increase his own vote and become the main candidate for the party. But the big question is whether there would there be enough Fine Gael votes in the county to elect a second candidate in an election where Sinn Fein are expected to make gains across the country.
Deputy Ring has indicated that he will make up his mind about whether to in the general election in the next few weeks. He is likely to wait until after the local and European elections, when the state of the party in the county will become a lot clearer.
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