Tipperary candidate wants to 'get his teeth' into the challenges that the constituency faces

On his only other attempt to win a seat in the Dáil, and in his first time contesting a General Election, Fine Gael’s Michael Murphy polled a respectable 5,402 first preference votes in the Tipperary South constituency in 2011.

Respectable though it was, his performance 13 years ago wasn’t sufficient to secure his election, the three seats instead being won by his party colleague Tom Hayes along with Mattie McGrath and Seamus Healy.

He was a relative novice in 2011, having only been elected as a councillor two years previously. However, the 57-year-old from Clonmel is a more seasoned campaigner at this stage, and is expected to win a seat when the people of south Tipperary go to the polls on Friday.

What’s his reaction to the commonly-held view that he and Deputy Mattie McGrath are favourites to take two of the three seats?

“The outcome of any election cannot be taken for granted,” he says.

“Every vote counts, and I am appealing to the electorate of south Tipperary to put confidence in me to be their Dáil representative”.

Cllr Murphy is throwing everything at his bid to win a seat, so much so that he has stepped away from his job of over 35 years, as a senior executive with the Enfer Technology Group, and from his ten-year membership of the European Committee of the Regions, where he led the Irish delegation.

He says he has done so to try and win a seat and to “get my teeth” into the challenges that the constituency faces.

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