Not much to report from City West today.  I’m confused as to the election campaign that the party are engaged in. Now I don’t expect that every parties national conference should be the same structure but this mornings session both pre and during the TV slot were very much focussed on the TD’s and Senators. They were chaired by the European Parliament Election  candidates Jim Higgins and Gay Mitchell.

Unlike the Fianna Fail, Green and Labour conferences, there was very little input from local election candidates this morning. There are 733 candidates running for Fine Gael in June. While the people to move motions were invariably local election candidates you would not know the election was 8 weeks away. Everything at party conferences is stage managed these days but I felt this morning was all about the Oireachtas members who one can hear from all the time and very little about the party at grassroots level.  No time for anyone to oppose motions either – unlike the Labour and Green conferences where some motions were opposed or amended by party members.

Maybe Fine Gael don’t think there is much value in lining up their local election candidates to talk about local issues and local experiences of national issues. Thats what I got from watching the Labour and Green Party conference on TV and online this year and we even shock horror got some breast beating from Fianna Fáil from candidates who wanted to talk about local issues with  a nod to the ‘problems’ at national level.