Republican News · Thursday 7 March 2002

Ferris unbowed

BY MICK DERRIG

It was nice that the good folk of Kerry had laid on a special welcome for Derrig from Donegal. The weather was Inishowen-like and they had laid on specially Gweedore type roads for me. I had this Donegal notion that things in Kerry were hunky dory, but the roads in the north of the county were as bad as any at home.

The meeting was arranged for the Sinn Féin offices in Tralee. The place is small and welcoming and it bustled with people coming in and out. These, I thought, are people with a purpose.

Martin Ferris and I settled in to the back office. Martin, as well as shaping up to be the Sinn Féin TD for Kerry North, is currently an Urban District Councillor and County Councillor and his constituents don't recognise elections as busy times. His two phones never stopped ringing throughout the interview. Invariably, it was a constituent looking for some action by the County Council on this or that.

I got the feeling that other county councillors wouldn't get the same volume of traffic. I think this is called being 'a victim of your own success'. Every call was dealt with in rapid fire Kerryese - every one of the callers was apparently a young male, "All right boy!" marking the end of each conversation.

I started the interview by asking Martin to sketch for me a pen picture of Kerry North. He told me that the county - but particularly North Kerry, has been politically neglected for a very long time.

Not surprisingly, a look at the economy proves that neglect. "The income per household in Kerry North is 70% of the average within the 26 Counties," says Ferris. "Unemployment is twice the average."

He also told me that Kerry North has experienced the biggest migration of skilled workers anywhere on the Western seaboard. He put this down to the wage structure in the constituency. He told me of a young man who was a qualified engineer he was earning IR£17,000 in Kerry working as an engineer. He moved to the same job - the identical position - in Shannon and is currently being paid IR£29,000 for the same work!

Historically, the county has been bled by emigration, mainly to the US and England. Kerry is economically dependent on agriculture and tourism, but the year past had been disastrous for both, due to Foot & Mouth Disease and the events of 11 September, respectively.

This crisis highlighted the constituency's lack of any major alternative source of employment. "Tourism is a major employer, but it is low paid and seasonal," said Martin. "There has been a gradual erosion of farm incomes and the lack of alternative employment is now glaring."

There is no doubt that Ferris' success in highlighting their failures has made him a target for the establishment parties. "Since 1997, there has been a concerted campaign to undermine my position," said Martin. "There is, in effect, an anti-Sinn Féin alliance. It's something they are all agreed on." There has certainly been no shortage of mud thrown in the direction of Ferris and his constituency workers by the establishment parties in crude attempts to damage Sinn Féin in the constituency. Ferris, though, is confident that it has been seen for that, because people know him.

The main national figure in the Kerry North constituency is former Labour leader and ex-Tánaiste Dick Spring. My reading of this constituency is that the third seat is up for grabs and it is a head to head between Martin and Dick Spring.

Spring has seen his own vote decline since the days that he was Tánaiste. In the last four years he has been "an absentee TD" according to Ferris. Spring has gone on record publicly that the only reason he is standing for re-election is to stop Ferris.

The day I was in Tralee, TV3 had been down to interview Martin, their interest in part fuelled by the IMS poll for the Irish Independent indicating that Spring would keep the seat. All previous polls - taken from bigger samples - had shown Ferris taking the third seat comfortably. It is standard stuff for politicians to rubbish polls that produce a bad result. However, there does seem to have been some problems with this poll. It has certainly produced markedly different findings to recent polls with much bigger samples polled.

Martin is under no illusions of what needs to be done in the coming weeks if he is to take the seat. His clear thinking and grasp of the electoral arithmetic reminded me of a chat I had with Pat Doherty when we were going door to door in Omagh. Pat had a clear view of what needed to be done to take the seat. I confidently predicted that he would win and so he did - despite what establishment journalists were saying.

The canvass in Kerry North so far has been encouraging. Martin and his team have canvassed 1,000 front doors - housing some 4,000 voters. Four hundred of those houses would be traditional republican territory.

Last time around, Ferris polled 5,691 first preferences. To get elected he will need a minimum of 7,290. Effectively, this election is about getting extra 2,000 votes.

The Casteleisland electoral area is key - it here that Martin Ferris will win or lose the election. Knowing where you have to do the work is half the battle. "We need to take 3,000 votes out of Tralee, hold our vote in Listowel and increase in the Casteleisland electoral area," he says.

Ferris is confident in the way that I saw Pat Doc confident - not in the usual bluster of politicians on the stump - but he knows what is to be done and he knows what is possible. All across the 26 Counties there are Sinn Féin candidates who are working away this election with a view to getting a county council seat next time around or on getting to the Dáil in the next general election. Ferris can go to the Dáil this time around.

He believes that the extra 2,000 votes are possible due to the record of constituency work that he has and of the indications that first time voters are heavily favouring Sinn Féin.

His phones hadn't stopped throughout the whole interview. We agreed that although I had to head north on 300 miles of the worst roads in Europe, that I would again travel south soon and spend an appropriate amount of time with the man and get a feel for the canvass and the constituency.

I'm looking forward to it.

BY MICK DERRIG