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FINE GAEL TD Fergus O’Dowd faces a challenge to hold onto his Dáil seat from his own brother who will be running for Renua in the next general election.
Michael O’Dowd has been selected as Renua’s candidate in five-seat Louth, setting up a tantalising election battle with his brother who is a former junior minister.
A former mayor of Drogheda, Michael O’Dowd quit Fine Gael to join Renua earlier this year. The accountant, who works with Enterprise Ireland, had previously failed to hold onto his county council seat in Louth in last year’s local elections.
This followed Fine Gael’s controversial decision to run five candidates, including Fergus’s son, Garrett, in the 10-seat Drogheda area. However, the party only took three seats with Garrett also failing to win one.
In a statement today, Michael, a married father-of-three, said that Louth needed people “who will stand up within the Dáil and the cabinet table for our county”.
Renua said in a statement that he would prioritise developing services for people with intellectual disabilities and is leading the team devising the party’s disability policy.
Fergus O’Dowd is one of two incumbent Fine Gael TDs battling it out to retain his seat in the five-seat constituency that also includes Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.
Fine Gael is also running Peter Fitzpatrick who recently changed his mind about not defending his Dáil seat. The former Louth GAA boss previously said he would not contest the election, but he was then convinced by the party hierarchy to stand.
Fine Gael may add a third candidate to the ticket with a decision expected as early as this week.
The O’Dowds are also brothers with Niall O’Dowd, the publisher of the Irish Voice newspaper and founder of IrishCentral.com, who briefly flirted with the idea of a presidential bid in 2011.
Michael O’Dowd has previously expressed admiration for Renua leader Lucinda Creighton and her decision to quit Fine Gael and her junior ministry over the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill in 2013.
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Wonderful news getting this off the streets.
@Derek Moean: whatever about the cannabis which is relatively harmless, good that those dangerous prescription drugs were seized. And as for the cocaine, whatever mixed white powder it is, one thing for sure is it is extremely dangerous leaving it controlled by a black market.
@Derek Moean: A quick phone call and you can have any of those drugs this morning for the same price they were yesterday. The same people who would have bought them yesterday will buy them today. This quite literally has zero impact on the market and is a complete waste of Garda resources especially when they’re cancelling 999 calls and failing to respond to urgent incidents. The insanity continues..
@Declan Doherty: definitely blame Gardai for enforcing the law. Imagine how much time they’d have to invest in other crimes if people didn’t use illegal substances….
@Paul Clancy: You are naive to think that human beings will not consume drugs. Its in our nature.
@Black Iron Tarkus: indeed. But neither could you expect society to exert no control over the recreational use of drugs really. As long as it isn’t allowed people use some caution, which holds it in check to a point but if that barrier was removed I could imagine a lot more problems with people under the influence of whatever they had taken. That said obviously the system that is there now is flawed and needs to be looked at. I do not think the answer is to think that because people will take drugs regardless we just let them at it.
@Mick Murphy: Not allowing something doesn’t stop people from doing it. If people want to take drugs they’ll take them regardless of the law. All prohibition does is drive it underground, create a profitable market for criminals and make it more dangerous for consumers. It also costs the state millions in a futile “war” when we could be generating significant revenue through taxation. We allow the sale of one of the most toxic, and harmful drugs on the planet while denying people the right to far safer alternatives. It’s hypocritical, it’s wrong and it needs to change.
@Mick Murphy: what are you basing your theory of people holding back when drugs are illegal? Is it just a gut feeling or is it based on the exponential increase in drug use since recreational drugs were made illegal?
With respect, I suggest your (and most people’s ) belief that illegality is needed to reduce use, is a fallacy with no evidence to back it up.
The next question is why you want use to reduce… if it is for public health and safety reasons, these goals would be best achieved in a legal regulated way.
If it is purely a moral point of view, that we just don’t like the idea of people altering their mental state… maybe that has no place in our laws.
People will consume drugs and have done since the dawn of time. It is part of the human condition.
@Paul Clancy, the vast majority of people who use illegal drugs do not have to commit crime to pay for their habit. How many robberies do you think The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Steve Jobs, Adam Clayton, Ronnie O’Sullivan etc had to commit to fund their drug use.
@Derek Moehan, oh yeah “wonderful” news, this will improve yours and my day, I sarcastically agree.
Who’s writing the prescriptions for that amount of tablet’s
have your say