June 1997. The night Jackie Healy-Rae was elected TD for South Kerry the scene in Killarney was like Puck Fair, the Rose of Tralee and a Kerry welcome for the Sam McGuire Cup rolled into one. The party went on for weeks as the new TD went back over pot-holed roads to the villages and parishes that had sent him to Leinster House with such a resounding mandate. It was the culmination of over twenty years of successful local politics, ever since Healy-Rae was elected to Kerry County Council in 1973. Director of elections for Fianna Fáil in numerous campaigns, he became a supreme political strategist. But he broke from the party in controversial circumstances before the 1997 general election. When the party refused to nominate him as a candidate he ran as an independent. Against all the odds he headed the poll. Within a matter of weeks, Jackie Healy-Rae was playing an important role in the formation of the new government by supporting the Fianna Fáil -Progressive Democrat coalition...and winning important concessions for Kerry in return. Jackie Healy-Rae is a grassroots politician of tremendous charisma and brilliance - from his humble beginnings to his business and political success - his is a story full of craic, humour and colour. (Extract from The Mighty Healy-Rae by Donal Hickey, published by Marino Books in 1997.) Books