Maeve McTaggart

What it means if a Social Democrat candidate wins in Dublin Central, you know, is that a sign of what's to come for Holly Cairns and her party?

Similarly,

You know, in Galway West, we're looking at will the fuel protests wave be ridden by Noel Thomas?

And, you know, how does that pan out?

But the conversations really don't seem to be what will the impact be on Fianna Fáil or Fianna Gael or the government parties.

It'll be significant in Dublin Central because if a government candidate doesn't win for the first time in a long time, there will be no government TD.

Full stop in a very significant constituency.

Absolutely.

And you're also looking then as well as, you know, what it signals for, you know, John Stevens, who himself campaigned quite a while ago for Bertie Ahern.

Yeah, you could say, will it be or will it also be, if Janet Horner from the Green Party does this, will that signal some sort of return for that party?

So the conversation...

And particularly then you also have this simultaneous plot line of how Gerry Hutch is going to do afterwards.

previous election.

Where will he place?

How will he do on transfers?

That's another simultaneous conversation happening about how he will perform.

Well, potentially you can see that this, a pitch like this, if it's going to perform well anywhere, it would perform well in this constituency at this time, particularly after the fuel protests.

I mean, you can say all you want, I think, in the campaign, but it comes to how you then deliver in a party whip

Yeah, exactly, you know, it's kind of a case study really in how that goes, particularly as you look at

In the context of these by-elections, there's so much that government is contending with and will definitely be facing on the doors in terms of cost of living, in terms of housing.