What Fine Gael would do differently, what happened at the meeting

23rd April, 2009

To anyone who checks my blog daily I apologise for posting nothing yesterday. It was the day after a public meeting and I always find that my energy dips a bit after the work of organising, doing and then concluding a public meeting. Yesterday was also a pretty busy day. I attended the funeral of the late Senator Tony Kett, and then had a lot of meetings in the afternoon.

The most pleasant of these meetings was chairing the Young Fine Gael AGM in St Pat’s Teachers Training College. This meeting was the last AGM for John Morrissey who has done a brilliant job building up the branch. He was recognised as Member of the Year by YFG. Richly deserved and very best of luck to Sinead Crilly in her new job as Chair of the branch.

The cause for the lack of a post was the recovery from our public meeting, ‘What Fine Gael would do differently’ held in Phibsborough on Tuesday night. We had a great turn out for the meeting with over 40 people attending. It was a huge success. Ray McAdam chaired the meeting brilliantly, getting a lot of discussion from the floor. Both myself and James Reilly addressed the meeting. We spoke about what Fine Gael would do differently. We covered off our policy launches in national finances, creating jobs in the Green economy, Oireachtas reform and universal health insurance. Everybody who spoke (and many did) raised detailed questions and ideas about our policies.

People are interested in politics again. They want to know what we would do differently on the big questions facing the country. Given the success of this meeting we will be holding more of them. Details to follow.