Mayo politics: Calleary christening his own first

Minister receives praise across the political spectrum

FIANNA Fáil councillor Sean Carey has returned to his seat beside Annie May Reape in the council chamber after an enduring year in the hot seat, having used his final address as cathaoirleach to reflect on a term that took in more than 500 engagements and over 50,000km behind the wheel.

It was, by any measure, a big year - nine sod-turnings in a single day, an €800,000 design consultancy award for Belmullet, and a starring role hosting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on his ancestral visit to Mayo.

Carey's colleagues queued up to praise him: impartial and fair, said Damien Ryan; done the county proud, said Peter Flynn. Even chief executive Kevin Kelly got a joke in about members wondering whether Carey had been caught in a traffic jam in Bellacorick when awaiting the man in chains' arrival at one event.

But the real story of the AGM wasn't Carey's send-off, warm as it was. It was what happened underneath it - the quiet, steady consolidation of Fianna Fáil's grip on Mayo politics, with one man's fingerprints all over it.

Minister Dara Calleary received praise across the political spectrum at the AGM, with councillors crediting him with delivering "right across the board." Sinn Féin's Gerry Murray talked up the minister's "trojan work" on the Western Rail Corridor, comparing the business of shifting civil servants to invest in counties such as Mayo to "trench warfare."

Brendan Mulroy urged him to keep delivering. Even Blackie Gavin, thanking the minister for keeping the funding taps open, couldn't resist reaching for Pádraig Flynn's old line about making sure to "christen your own first" - a pointed one coming from a councillor who still sits under the Fianna Fáil banner but has made a habit of voting against the party from within it, and well aware that unlike the Flynn era, the cathedral of power now sits in Ballina, stretches to Erris under Carey, and is shifting east under John Caulfield - all strategic and spiritual homes for Fianna Fáil that Gavin's own patch isn't among.

The minister left the AGM chamber to go straight to the Taoiseach's arrival at the Military Barracks - swapping one Fianna Fáil stage for a bigger one. It doesn't get much more on-brand than that. Calleary might have been forgiven for lingering a little longer in the chamber, head turned by the councillors' praise - but he still made it out the door in time for the Taoiseach's arrival at the Barracks.

The problem for Fianna Fáil is that all of this momentum is disproportionately parked in Calleary's own back yard. Whether by design or by sheer coincidence, the absence of a strong county town cumann is still being felt and noted by politicos.

In the Castlebar Municipal District, the party still doesn't have anyone capable of laying a glove on a slick, well-organised Fine Gael operation. The gap widens with each announcement in Castlebar and welcome extended to dignitaries, particularly with three short years before a local election. Any anointed one is yet to raise their hand in Castlebar.

What Calleary does have, though, is geography working in his favour. Sean Carey's term has shored up Erris. Caulfield's elevation should do the same for the east of the county - traditionally important ground for the minister as he builds whatever comes next.

Calleary himself played it typically coy when speaking to Claire Byrne on Newstalk last week about ambition beyond his current role: "There's no vacancy, I'm not even considering it. I'm not doing 'what-iffery,'" he said, when asked about the leadership question that will not go away no matter how often he swats it down.

There is a sense that a rural Taoiseach is what is needed in light of the haemorrhaging of support Fianna Fáil are experiencing in the countryside to Independent Ireland and Aontú, and he would have that backing for that role too.

He has given Micheál Martin his full support in public and in private, but he wasn't going to chase the Taoiseach around the county and provide his undivided attention, not with the time needed to watch Caulfield take the chains in the same chamber he watched with his parents as Annie May Reape became the first and only woman to ever sit as cathaoirleach.

His demeanour has been noted too. On that Newstalk interview, he's the sole cabinet minister capable of showing his personality of late.

The sod-turnings, the Friday morning, afternoon and evening event openings, and as John O'Hara alluded to "the fresh Bonniconlon air he's now breathing in" since his move to the most northerly point of the constituency may have all contributed to him being at his zenith.

There's a knowing sense that any move to leader and then Taoiseach would see those positive hallmarks for Mayo and Fianna Fáil around the county swiftly disappear with the heightened expectation and intense spotlight.

Martin isn't going anywhere and it looks unlikely that he will be pushed.

Why when having so much fun in his role as minister would Calleary be the man to topple him?