MCELVANEY QUITS FINE GAEL

Michael Fisher

It was political drama at its best. But Monday night’s public meeting served only as the prelude for an even bigger drama that was to unfold the next day involving Fine Gael. Monaghan’s longest-serving and best-known county councillor Hugh McElvaney, speaking “with a heavy heart and a soul that is distraught”, told a packed public meeting he was leaving the party he had represented for 41 years.

The audience at the Glencarn Hotel in Castleblayney had come to attend a discussion on the controversial North-South electricity interconnector. It was the government’s lack of response to councillors and objectors from the County Monaghan area who had sought a meeting with the Taoiseach on the pylons issue that persuaded Cllr McElvaney the time was right to jump ship. So after his long service as a Fine Gael public representative, the Corcaghan man decided his future lay as an independent.

Making the point dramatically after he finished speaking, Cllr McElvaney bounded over to the top table where Sean Conlan T.D. was sitting alongside other Oireachtas members. Hughie produced his Fine Gael card and told Deputy Conlan to hand it over to the Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Enda…