Few certainties in Dublin West

RECENT polls have predicted that Tánaiste Joan Burton could be in real danger of losing the Dublin West seat she comfortably held at the last election in 2011 when she topped the poll.

Five years ago Labour won 18 seats in Dublin. But the decision to team up with Fine Gael in Government doesn’t appear to have gone down well with some voters and their sitting TDs will certainly struggle across the capital on February 26.

A party leader losing her seat would be a real humiliation for Labour – and a personal blow the Tánaiste would find it hard to recover from politically.

However, Deputy Burton won’t go down without a fight and she’ll be battling hard to keep the seat she first won in 1992 and has held since 2002.

Much of the focus in Dublin West will be on the Tánaiste but there are other interesting questions waiting to be answered in this constituency on polling day.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar (FG) looks comfortable according to the polls. But could he be facing trouble in this traditionally left-leaning constituency or will his popularity benefit running mate Catherine Noone, and where will her transfers go if she’s eliminated?

Can Sinn Féin’s Cllr Paul Donnelly finally make the breakthrough his party has been hoping for in Dublin West after years of disappointment? And with popular Socialist TD Joe Higgins standing down, will his support automatically transfer to Ruth Coppinger (AAA-PBP)?

Can David McGuinness (Ind) bring enough support from his former party, Fianna Fáil, to scupper the chances of Cllr Jack Chambers (FF)? And what about Independents like TJ Clare and Dermot Casey, the Green Party’s Roderic O’Gorman or Renua’s Jo O’Brien?

So what do people on the ground think? We decided to take an unscientific approach to this particular question and took to the streets to ask locals what way they’d be voting this Friday.

We went across Dublin West to Castleknock, Corduff and Blanchardstown and asked 100 voters from these three very different areas who they’d be giving their number one to.

Our random survey was in no way an official poll but there was relatively good news for Joan Burton who got 14 per cent, just behind Cllr Jack Chambers (FF) on 15 per cent. The Tánaiste had over 22 per cent of first preferences in 2011 but recent polls have had her as low as 10 per cent – 14 per cent would put her in the mix for a seat.

Likewise for Cllr Chambers, who the party faithful see as a natural successor to the local Lenihan seat held by Brian Snr and Jnr from the ‘70s until 2011 when the former Finance Minister passed away.

There’s good news for Cllr Paul Donnelly (SF) if the people we spoke to are anything to go by, as his popularity in Corduff helped him get 28 per cent in our survey.

That’s more than Leo Varadkar, who did well in Castleknock and Blanchardstown, and got the thumbs-up from 26 per cent of those asked.

But his running mate Catherine Noone failed to register with anybody we asked, as did Renua’s Jo O’Brien.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ruth Coppinger only scored three per cent in our exercise, while the Independents reached a combined 10 per cent – the majority in support of David McGuinness.

However, that was just the response from 100 random people and the real answers will come from locals on February 26. 

It’s your decision at the end of the day.