Adrian Kavanagh, initially posted on 2nd July 2013

With less than eleven months to go until next year’s local elections, the preparations for these have been significantly ramped up following the recent publication of the Local Electoral Area Boundary Committee Report 2013 last month. Earlier I tried to tease out some of Fianna Fail’s list of local election candidates by looking at that party’s Local Area Representative grouping. This post will look at another potential group of local election candidates, namely the former party TDs who lost their seats at the 2011 General Election as well as the other unsuccessful party candidates who contested that election. 56 Fianna Fail candidates failed to win seats at the 2011 General Election. A number of these general election candidates could well be seeking to be Fianna Fail candidates at the May 2014 local elections and they will have strong cases to win a party nomination  to contest these given that these are people who contested a highly unpromising general election for the party (and in some cases had very little time to organise a meaningful election campaign) at a time when other, often more experienced, party members were clearly opting not to do so. These unsuccessful general election candidates and the new local election constituencies that these candidates, as to the best of my knowledge based on available details, would be located in are listed in the table below.

The list of unsuccessful Fianna Fail candidates at the February 2011 election, including the TDs who lost their seats is as follows. Some of the people in this group are no longer members of the party, it must be noted, including Chris Andrews, or have effectively retired from active electoral politics.

Former party TD, Michael Fitzpatrick (Kildare North), sadly passed away a few months after the 2011 elections. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.

Some of these candidates listed above are of course currently serving on County and City Councils. A good number of the group of party candidates who were not TDs at the time of the general election (e.g. David McGuinness, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor) would fall into this category although some others did not hold elected office at that time (e.g. Ivan Connaughton, Lisa Chambers, Michael F. Dolan, Averil Power) while others such as Denis O’Donovan and James Carroll held seats in the Seanad. Some of these candidates, as well as some the former TDs group,  did manage to win seats in Seanad Eireann some months later as noted in the table above and these of course will not be seeking to contest the local elections as a result.

Some of the group of former Fianna Fail TDs who lost their seats at the 2011 contest are likely to contest the 2014 local elections as potentially a key step in a years-long campaign leading up to an attempt to reclaim their Dail seats at the next general election, although some of these will have also largely retired from political life at this stage. It is worth remembering that a number of the Fine Gael TDs who lost their seats in the 2002 General Election went on to win seats at the 2004 Local Elections ahead of regaining their Dail seats at the 2007 contest, including Michael Creed, PJ Sheehan and Deirdre Clune.  

Former Laois-Offaly TD, John Moloney, has publicly declared his intention to seek a nomination to contest the new Borris in Ossory-Mountmellick electoral area . Eamon Scanlon, who lost his seat in Sligo-North Leitrim in 2011, is also seeking a nomination to contest the local elections in the Ballymote-Tubbercurry electoral area.

Former Cavan-Monaghan TD, Margaret Conlon, is currently a Local Area Representative for Carrickmacross and thus strongly positioned to be a party candidate for the Carrickmacross-Castleblaney electoral area in 2014. In a similar vein, former Kildare North TD, Aine Brady, the a Fianna Fail LAR for the Clane area, suggesting she will more than likely be one of the Fianna Fail candidates in the Maynooth electoral area in the 2014 elections. As well as Aine Brady and Margaret Conlon, some of the other unsuccessful 2011 candidates are currently members of the party’s Local Area Representatives group, including Lisa Chambers and Daithi O Donnabhain, and these would appear to be well placed to claim a party nomination to contest next year’s elections.

The intentions of some of the other former TDs remain unclear at present. For instance, the August 28th edition of The Kerryman talks of a “Mac Mystery”, as it not yet clear whether former Kerry North TD, Tom McEllistrim, will contest the upcoming Listowel electoral area on October 3rd, at which as many as “750 members will cast votes in the party’s new ‘one member, one vote’ system”.  

Update: as reported in the September 11th 2013 edition of The Examiner, Tom McEllistrim will be seeking a nomination to contest the Tralee electoral area. His sister, Anne, who is currently a County Councillor for Tralee, will instead seek a nomination to contest the Killarney electoral area.

Chris Andrews resigned from Fianna Fail and has recently joined Sinn Fein and is likely to be a candidate for that part in the Pembroke-South Dock electoral area at next year’s local elections.

Update: Eamon Scanlon, former TD for Sligo-North Leitrim, has become the first out of the Former TDs group to be confirmed as a candidate for next year’s local elections, after being selected as one of Fianna Fail’s four candidates for the Ballymore-Tubbercurry electoral area at a selection convention on 18th September.

22 outgoing Fianna Fail TDs decided not to contest the 2011 elections (as noted below) and a motion was passed at the 2013 Ard Fheis to prevent this group from standing again for the party in future electoral contests.

There may be some grey area here however that could yet allow some of this group to contest the local elections despite the 2013 Ard Fheis motion. This group covers a number of different types of cases and one of these cases refers to TDs who may (possibly rather reluctantly) have decided to stand aside at the 2011 election as part of Fianna Fail’s (in my opinion largely misguided) attempt to retain as many seats as possible by running a smaller number of party candidates in the face of the collapse in party support. Some of this group may be able to argue on this basis of this, or other mitigating circumstances, and attain positions on the party ticket at next year’s local elections, whereas others may well decide to contest these elections as independent candidates if they fail to attain a party nomination.