Adrian Kavanagh, 30th October 2018

This post will attempt to list all of the “New Irish”, or Non-Irish/UK national, candidates who have been officially selected to contest the local elections in May 2019, or else have declared their intentions to contest these elections as independent candidates. For the purposes of this post, the definition of “New Irish” includes people who were born outside Ireland and who were not Irish (or UK) citizens before moving to the Republic Ireland. This post will include candidates who subsequently gained Irish citizenship on moving to, or after moving to, the Republic of Ireland as is the case for a number of the candidates listed here.

At present (as of 28th May 2019) I can account for fifty three candidates in this group (2.7% of the total number of selected/declared local election candidates), including twenty female candidates (32.7%) and thirty three males (62.3%) candidates.

At least seven New Irish candidates are running for the Green Party and six New Irish candidates are running for Fine Gael, while at least five candidates are running for Fianna Fáil, four candidates are running for the Labour Party, three candidates are running for People Before Profit and two candidates are running for the Social Democrats, as well as one Renua Ireland candidate. Twenty five New Irish candidates are contesting this election as Independents/Non Party candidates.

One member of this group, Elena Secas, is a sitting County and Town Councillor, representing the Limerick City East electoral area. The other “New Irish” candidate to win a seat in the 2014 Local Elections, Edmond Lukusa (Mulhuddart, Sinn Féin) is not contesting the 2019 elections. Cllr. Madeleine Johansson, who was co-opted on to South Dublin County Council to replace Gino Kenny after the 2016 General Election, is contesting these elections, however.

Non-Irish nationals currently account for 11.3% of the Irish population based on the most recent Census of 2016, with this percentage falling to 9.1% when UK nationals are taken out of this group. If the proportion of successful non-Irish/UK nationals local election candidates at at the May 24th local elections was similar to this level (i.e. 9.1%), there would be 86 “New Irish” Councillors (based on a total number of 949 City and County Council members).

At the 2014 City and County Council elections, I estimate that 31 New Irish candidates contested these elections, with two running for Fine Gael, two running for Labour, one running for Sinn Féin, three running for the Green Party and two running for the People Before Profit Alliance, while the other twenty one candidates contested the elections as independent candidates. Two of these thirty one candidates were successful – Elena Secas for Labour in Limerick City East and Edmond Lukusa for Sinn Féin in Mulhuddart. At the 2009 City and County Council elections, I estimate that 19 New Irish candidates contested these elections, with three running for Fianna Fail, two running for Fine Gael, one running for Labour and three running for the Green Party, while the other ten contested the elections as independent candidates. One of these nineteen candidates was successful – Rotimi Adebari in Portlaoise, who had previously won a Town Council in 2004.

The list of “New Irish” candidates for the 2019 City and County Council elections is presented below. This list will be updated, as and when new candidate information is received by me.

I do my best to ensure that the candidate lists on this website are fully accurate, but there can be errors and omissions (especially in the case of local election candidates, given the large number of people involved – usually over two thousand – and the difficulty in attaining information for some areas/parties).

If there are any candidates who should be included on this list (or are included here, but should not be) or if any other errors in relation to this list are noted, please bring these to my attention by emailing me at adrian.p.kavanagh@mu.ie.

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