Irish Elections: Geography, Facts and Analyses

Adrian Kavanagh, First posted 17th October 2018, with updates as new candidate nominations announced. Any links in this post are to online announcements of candidate selections – there will be no specific links to candidate webpages.

The fourth of my series of rolling blog posts, in which I detail the latest information as to candidate selections relating to the different political parties and grouping and/or candidate declarations (as in the case of the non-party grouping). The rule of thumb here is that I will add party candidates in most cases only after they have been officially selected to run for the party at a selection convention or by some other means of candidate selection. I try my best to find information about local election candidate selection conventions, but in some cases this information is hard to find and occasionally it can be some time after a convention takes place before I find this information and hence am in a position to update this page accordingly.

The post will focus on Fine Gael candidate selections ahead of the 2019 City and County Council elections. 

After a very strong performance at the 2009 Local Elections, where the party outpolled Fianna Fáil in a national election for the first time in its history, Fine Gael lost a number of seats at the 2014 contest. Winning 235 seats in these contests, Fine Gael once again became the second largest party at the local authority level behind Fianna Fáil, although they would retain their position as largest party in the state at general election contest at the subsequent 2016 General Election. Defections from the party reduced the overall number of Fine Gael City and County Councillors over the coming years, but this has been somewhat offset by the fact that a number of other Councillors have decided to join the party over this same period. According to my best estimates, I currently estimate that there are 234 Fine Gael City and County Councillors.

Unusually for a party in government, Fine Gael may well approach the 2019 Local Elections with the expectation of a number of gains, especially in light of trends in opinion polls over the past year and a half which show the party on a level of support that is a number of percentage points above the level of support won by Fine Gael at the 2016 General Election (and indeed the 2014 City and County Council elections). The changing local election boundaries could potentially help Fine Gael (and work against the smaller parties), given that lower district magnitudes are generally expected to give the largest political parties a “seat bonus”. While this applies very much to general elections, however, sometimes the “local” nature of City and County Council elections can mean that the potential for such a “seat bonus” is not as strong as might be anticipated.

As of now (15th January 2019), one hundred and thirty three Fine Gael local election candidates are listed on this page. Thirty four of these candidates are women (25.6%) and ninety nine of these are men (74.4%). As far as I am aware, sixty one Fine Gael selection conventions have taken place so far.

Seventy seven (57.9%) of these selected Fine Gael candidates are currently incumbents (City/County Council members).

The candidates that have been officially selected to contest the 2019 Local Elections as Fine Gael candidates include:

(Please note that, as in the other similar posts, any links that are provided here are to posts/newspaper reports offering “evidence” of their candidatures and will normally not link back to candidate websites.):

I will be adding to this list as and when I come across further declarations of intentions to contest these elections on the part of other non-party candidates. This cohort of candidates often tends to be the hardest to glean information on, so this list may not be as up to date/accurate as the similar posts for the different parties.

The Fine Gael selection convention for Ratoath took place on 16th October 2018 and three candidates – all incumbents – were selected at this.

The selection convention for Limerick City East took place on 22nd October, as reported in the Limerick Leader (23rd October 2018), and three candidates, including two incumbents, were selected at this.

Cllr. John Kennedy was selected as the party candidate for the Stillorgan electoral area at a selection convention on 1st November 2018. Eoghan Howe was selected to contest the South West Inner City electoral area as the Fine Gael party candidate on 5th November 2018.  As reported by the Limerick Leader (3rd November 2018), Cllrs. Daniel Butler and Elenora Hogan were selected to contest the Limerick City West electoral area for Fine Gael at a convention which took place on 3rd November 2018 – two Patrickswell-based nominees lost out at the convention; Fergus Kilcoyne and 20-year-old Daniel McSweeney.

Eight candidates were selected to contest the three electoral areas located within the Dún Laoghaire Dáil constituency on 9th November 2018 at a selection convention held at the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel. Cllr. Aidan Campbell and Mary Kerr-Conlon were selected as candidates for Carrickamacross-Castleblaney at a selection convention which took on that same day – this convention was also contested by Pat Cassidy, as reported on the Northern Sound website (9th November 2018). The Killaloe selection convention took place on 12th November and selected three candidates. Selection conventions in the North City of Dublin (Artane/Donaghmede) took place on 14th November, while a number of conventions in the east of Galway County (Loughrea, Gort, Tuam) took place on the following day. Cllr. Pat Hand, Anna Grainger and Jim O’Leary were selected as the Fine Gael candidates for the Dundrum electoral area at a selection convention on 16th November 2018. Fine Gael selections for the Dublin West Dáil constituency area took place on 19th November 2019. Cllr Joe Neville was selected as the Fine Gael candidate for the Leixlip electoral area on that same night. The convention for the Clontarf electoral area took place on 26th November 2018, while the convention for Ballybay-Clones took place on the following night. Conventions for the electoral areas on the northside of Cork City took place on 29th November, while conventions for the southside electoral areas took place later in that week, as reported in the Evening Echo (1st December 2018).

The selection convention for the Edenderry electoral area took place on 3rd December 2018, also did the conventions for the Rush-Lusk and Balbriggan electoral areas, as well as the conventions for Ennistymon, as reported by the Clare Echo (4th December 2018) and An Daingean. A number of selection conventions took place in County Cork in early December 2018, including Bandon-Kinsale and Clonakilty-Skibbereen (7th December 2018) and Macroom (9th December 2018) – John Kelliher also contested the Macroom selection convention. The selection convention for Castleisland took place on 7th December 2018, as reported on the Radio Kerry website (8th December 2018). The Swords selection convention took place on 10th December 2018. As reported by the Longford Leader (12th December 2018), the selection convention for the Longford (Town) electoral area took place on 11th December 2018 in the Longford Arms Hotel. The Muinebeag selection convention took place on 13th December 2018 with the convention for the Pilltown electoral area being held on the following night, while the selection convention for the Cashel-Tipperary electoral area took place on 16th December 2018. As reported on the Kildare Now website (14th December 2018), the selection convention for the Clane electoral area took place on 13th December 2018 in the Westgrove Hotel in Clane. The selection convention for the Howth-Malahide electoral area took place on 17th December 2018. The selection convention for the Listowel electoral area took place on 20th December 2018 in the Listowel Arms Hotel; as reported on the Radio Kerry website (21st December 2018), this was contested, with Clare Creighton and Mike Foley losing out in the vote to select just two candidates. 

The selection convention for the Westport electoral area took place on Friday 11th January 2019, as reported by The Connaught Telegraph (12th January 2019); this was also contested by Johnny O’Malley. As reported by the Laois Today (14th January 2019) website, the Portlaoise selection convention is scheduled to take place on Wednesday 16th January 2019. Four candidates have been nominated to contest this and all of these may be selected to run.