Thursday, May 3, 2007

Day 5


What a day!

An early start as usual. Good news for a local company. Dromone Engineering signed an M.O.U. with Chinese Partners to bring Meath technology to China. They invited me to witness the ceremony. An enterprising company in the heart of rural Meath leading the way in China. The new Ireland is a great place.

Then on to LM/FM for the election debate from Meath West. I had been told Joey Reilly and Brian Collins were the other guests but Damien English replaced Joey - a new coalition?

The debate was lively and covered a range of issues. Plenty of cut and thrust, some ball hopping from Michael Reid (as usual!) but hopefully it was informative at this early stage of the campaign.

Then on to the Mansion House - the real start to the real campaign. Great crowd turned out - and that was just the media.

The media have given their version of the conference. They have decided that Fianna Fail looked "nervous". The Taoiseach was "tense" - all because he had to answer questions. At the risk of being accused of bias - a lot of that comment is nonsense.

The Taoiseach may have been nervous - anyone who has played a sport, debated, had to make a speech knows that there is a nervous tension that builds up just prior to the event. If you haven't the "butterflies" you don't perform well.

Following the launch, a quick dash to Kildare St. for a live link up with RTE TV for a 3 way debate on environmental issues with Eamon Ryan and Fergus O'Dowd. After answering the initial question the sound broke down and the debate went out the window. Fifteen minutes later I went live again for the programme.

"Prime Time" was supposed to be about the election manifestos launched to-day but of course the media want to talk about the Taoiseach's private finances. They have made a judgement that the public are only interested in a fabricated scandal. That's their professional judgement - but I believe that the public are interested in policies and how this country will progress. Because the Taoiseach is considered one of Fianna Fail's greatest

Despite elections Ministerial business goes on with meetings in the Department and the official opening of a major conference organised for the Irish Property Fund Managers by the Ulster Bank Group, on the energy market in Ireland.

Tomorrow will be a day for travelling the constituency. The Taoiseach will do a walkabout in towns around the country. It's a fine tradition of Irish politics, that always rallys the troops.

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