New Kildare North TD "will still be taking out the bins" - according to his wife

By Henry Bauress

At the Kildare Count Centre at Punchestown

It was early enough in the day last Saturday but the tallies, the unofficial numbers counted by teams of volunteers when the ballots were opening, were indicating that then Cllr Aidan Farrelly of the Social Democrats might take a seat in Kildare North.
I bumped into the now Deputy and his wife, Aisling, and commented that life might change for them.
She responded that her ever loving husband would still be putting out the bins!
It was a reminder that while things change some things may not change.
I can assure readers that I will not be monitoring Deputy Farrelly’s bin moving activities nor will I be organising teams of volunteers to do it from him.
I do hope that he and his elected colleagues will not be overburdened by small less important details but will have the time and space to mind the bigger picture, nationally and internationally, for us.
And, yes, I know, all politics is local.
For me the results in Kildare North and South were not a surprise though beforehand I was not sure about how Sinn Fein would do or what would happen to the votes of Catherine Murphy who was not standing.
What she did however appears to have had a big influence on how Aidan Farrelly succeeded.
He told us that Catherine accompanied him on the canvas and that she was constantly thanked for her work.
The ‘Purple People’ obviously did a very good job.
I learned at the Count Centre that it was almost by accident that the Social Democrats chose the colour purple.
Some of their supporters worried that historically the colour purple stood for wealth, not quite what the Soc Dems stood for!
At a very early stage in her career, Catherine was, apparently, also advised to avoid wearing a pearl necklace.
She ignored the advice and the rest is history.
The story reminded me of the late Mary O’Rourke.
I met her at one of the many Intel Fab openings over the years.
I noticed she was the only one not wearing an Intel designated badge of some kind and asked her why. “It would ruin my clothes,” she responded.
For me, the Sinn Fein vote in Kildare is less about the personalities and their clothes than the political issues.
It reflects a major concern with one of the essential aspects of our lives, the purchase or availability of housing at a price proportional to one’s salary.
But even if the political wind was in their favour, it was probably more difficult for Reada Cronin to be elected so well on this second run of the Sinn Fein long time surge.

My instinct at this stage is to wish all our TD’s good luck and to mind their health, mental and physical.
A more poignant aspect of the weekend was seeing Bernard Durkan lose his seat.
And while it was great to see Senator Mark Wall back in the Dail, I was sad for Senator Fiona O’Loughlin.
My mind went back many years to her late father, the courageous Jimmy, of whom I was very fond.
Whatever the politics, the meeting of two men in particular, spelled out how local and close our politics are.
Colm O Cearúil, father of Naoise, and Tom Neville, father of Joe, shook hands in my company. “We go a long way back,” they agreed.
Colm taught the Neville children in school and said that Tom, a retired Garda Superintendent, took no prisoners at parent meetings.
As I wrote above, I wish them all well.
Increasingly they will have to be as concerned with events at a European Union and international level as they are with the footpaths in Maynooth, Newbridge and Athy.

A topic of conversation at the count was the relative success of Hutch in Dublin.
Returning home, I located my copy of The Monk, by Paul Williams.
It is a fascinating read which says a lot, not just about crime, but also about our system.