Adrian Kavanagh 14th January 2014

This post lists all of the City/County Councillors who are retiring at the May 23rd local elections, or who have indeed retired at an earlier date (and who have by this stage been replaced by a co-option from their party or group). This list does not include those local authority members who retired from the council in order to take up positions in Dail Eireann or Seanad Eireann or the European Parliament. This list also does not include incumbents who contested Local Elections 2014 selection conventions for their political parties and failed to win nominations, even if they announce their retirements after such defeats. Further details on some of the cases listed here can be viewed in the different, regional, posts, listing the current members of the City/County Councils as matched against the new constituency areas, including the posts for the Dublin, (rest of) Leinster, Connacht-Ulster and Munster region.

At present I can account for one hundred and sixty six (18.8% of the number elected (883) in 2009) people in this group, but these numbers are likely to be added to in future weeks as the remaining party conventions take place and as non-party incumbents make decisions on whether they will contest the local elections, or not.

One hundred and twenty two of the people in this group are male (73.5%) and forty four are female (26.5%).  The level of female retirements is especially high, given that females only accounted for 16.6% of the successful candidates at the 2009 City and County Council elections (147 out of the 883 candidates elected). This high level of female retirements have been offset somewhat by the relatively high level of female co-options – with females accounting for 28 of the 103 co-options (27.2%) involving City and County Council members that have taken place since the 2009 Local Elections. The level of female retirements is especially high in certain areas. Indeed, at present it would seem that more females (16) than males (11) have retired/will be retiring from local politics across the four different local authority areas in the Dublin region (and females account for 72.7% of retired/retiring councillors in the Dublin City local authority area). There are also a notably high level of retirements involving female Fine Gael councillors in Kilkenny, Meath and Waterford.

It is interesting to note that a number of the councillors who are retiring, or have retired, were themselves co-options to replace former councillors who had won election to Dail/Seanad Eireann or who had retired themselve. (These are highlighted by a * in the list below.) Twelve of the retiring councillors/former councillors at present fall within this group (9.0% of the total number of retirements.) Anna Quigley was co-opted to replace Marie Metcalfe, who was herself a co-optee, is also included within this group, as is Grainne Brady, who was co-opted to replace Pauline Tully McCauley after her retirement.

Mary Fitzpatrick is not contesting the local elections to defend her Cabra local elections seat in order to concentrate on her European Parliament elections campaign.

Included in the list below is Matthew McDonagh who was elected as a Sinn Fein candidate for Clondalkin in 2009, but stepped down some years into his five-year term on South Dublin County Council. However, he will be contesting the upcoming local elections in that same electoral area as an independent candidate.

If you notice any errors or omissions in this list – if I am missing someone here that you know has officially confirmed their decision to retire or if I have “prematurely ended someone’s local politics career”, please do bring these to my attention: please see the Contacts Details page for this site.

Thanks to those who have already done so – including Terry Murphy (see below), Laura McGonigle, Malcolm Byrne, John McGahon, Gary Carvile, Leo Kavanagh, JJ Hurley, Francis Timmons and Neale Richmond.