Tánaiste Micheál Martin wants to win a seat in Tipperary South

While nobody dared to describe it as such, a Saturday afternoon visit to  Clonmel and Cahir by Tánaiste Micheál Martin, had all the appearances of a General Election walkabout.

A courteous Micheál Martin, accompanied by  Fianna Fáil General Election candidate Cllr Imelda Goldsboro, walked both sides of O’Connell Street in autumnal sunshine meeting people on the street and calling in to chat with business owners and their customers.

SPECULATION

While speculation is mounting among the already declared candidates and their supporters in south Tipperary as to when the election date will be, the visit on Saturday by such a leading political figure, hot on the heels of visits to the county by the Taoiseach Simon Harris and Finance Minister Jack Chambers, had a distinct General Election feel about it.

Forever the diplomat Tánaiste Micheál Martin was not giving anything away outlining his own preference for a 2025 election date while in Clonmel.

ELECTION ISSUES

“We do know that we have to have a General Election at some stage in the next five months. My ideal preference is February and we will see what happens, I think we need to get a budget done. The cost of living is the big issue, housing, health, services, education, and childcare. So those are the issues that we are focussing on,” said the Tánaiste.

“We want to develop investment in water infrastructure in the towns and villages across the country and I think we will be in a position to allocate additional capital to Irish Water to do that and additional capital to the Land Development Agency in terms of it having enough capital to fulfil its plans to develop houses and to maintain and get more houses built through the various schemes that are there,” he added while on the streets of a town crying out for more investment from Irish Water and the delivery of long awaited infrastructure projects.

STRONG CANDIDATE

Talking about the determination of the party to win a seat in the Tipperary South constituency, Tánaiste Martin described Cllr Imelda Goldsboro as a strong candidate who had received a big vote in the local elections.

TRADITION

“Imelda is a very strong candidate and has demonstrated that in terms of her vote-getting capacities by topping the poll the last time out in the Local Elections, I think she and  her team has extraordinary capacity and our councillors did well. We will be very strong and I think we will have a very strong capacity here. There is a great tradition in south Tipperary for Fianna Fáil. The Fianna Fáil community wants the seat for the party and want someone to represent the party at the Government level and that is very important, we saw that in the recent allocation of sports grants for example and Imelda played a very strong role with clubs like Killenaule and others getting really substantial grants and that has gone down very well. Imelda is a very strong community activist and has a reputation for getting hard work done,” he said.