Adrian Kavanagh, 24th April 2014 

A high level of successful candidates at the 2009 City and County Council elections went on to be successful at national elections subsequently. This post outlines the candidates who subsequently went on to become members of the Oireachtas at the general elections of 2011 (or subsequent by-elections) and the party and geographical trends relating to these.

In all, 75 successful candidates at the 2009 City and County Council elections went on to become members of the Oireachtas – accounting 8.5% of the total number of candidates (883) who won seats at these elections and for just under a third (33.2%) of the current membership of Oireachtas Eireann. 59 of these candidates subsequently won seats in Dail Eireann – including Patrick Nulty who won a seat in Dublin West in 2011 but who subsequently resigned his seat in 2014. These candidates accounted for 6.7% of the total number of candidates who won seats in the 2009 City and County Council elections, but also 35.5% of the total number of Dail Eireann members. 16 of these candidates subsequently won seats in the Seanad elections. These candidates accounted for 1.8% of the total number of candidates who won seats in the 2009 City and County Council elections, but also 26.7% of the total membership of Seanad Eireann.

Not surprisingly, a significant number of these candidates would have topped the poll in their respective electoral areas at the 2009 contest, but poll toppers of course do not exclusively account for all the candidates in this group. Indeed some electoral areas provided two successful candidates who went on to win seats in Dail Eireann or Seanad Eireann, as can be seen above.

It is worth noting that a number of successful candidates at the Town and Borough Council elections of 2009 (who did not also contest the County Council elections) were also successful in the 2011 Dail Election, including Ciara Conway (Dungarvan/Waterford) and Sean Conway (Ballybay/Cavan-Monaghan).

Marcella Corcoran Kennedy actually lost her Council seat at the 2009 election in the Ferbane electoral area, but went on to successfully contest the 2011 Dail Election in the Laois-Offaly constituency.

Of the different regions, the Dublin region accounted for the largest number of seat gains by successful local election candidates at the 2011 Dail Election, but Dublin only accounted for two of the 16 successful local election candidates who went on to win seats in Seanad Eireann (both of whom were female). 21 successful local election candidates in the Dublin region went on to win seats in Dail Eireann at the 2011 General Election (or the 2011 Dublin West by-election). Nearly all of the electoral areas in Dublin City provided successful local election candidates who went on to win seats at the 2011 General Election, with the only exceptions being Cabra-Glasnevin (though Mary Ftizpatrick came close to winning a seat here) and South West Inner City (none of the successful candidates here were selected to contest the general election). The other seat gains at the Dail election were accounted for by 12 successful candidates from the (rest of) Leinster region, 13 successful candidates from Munster and 13 successful candidates from Connacht-Ulster.  As regards Seanad Eireann, Munster was the most significant region here in providing seven of the successful local election candidates who went on to win seats, as opposed to four candidates from Connacht-Ulster, three from (rest of) Leinster and two from Dublin.

Fourteen (18.7%) of the successful local election candidates listed above are female, while sixty one (81.3%) are male. As regards those who went on to win seats in Dail Eireann, forty nine are male (83.1%) and ten (16.9%) are female, while four females (25.0%) and twelve males (75.0%) form the group of candidates who went on to win seats at Seanad Eireann.

One of the candidates listed above, Maureen O’Sullivan, won a Dail seat (at the 2009 Dublin Central by-election) on the same day as she won her seat in the Council elections and subsequently never actually took up her seat in Dublin City Council. The same applies in the case of Joe Higgins, though he won a European Parliament seat on the same day as winning his Council seat; subsequently he won a seat in Dublin West at the Dail election of 2011. Another successful local election candidate who went on to become a member of the European Parliament was Labour’s Emer Costello (North Inner City), who was co-opted to replace Proinnsias de Rossa on his retirement. If she is included, this means that 76 successful candidates (9.1%) at the 2009 City and County Council elections went on to take up seats at the national and/or European levels.