Adrian Kavanagh, First posted 4th July 2023, with updates as I become aware of candidate selections, or candidates being added to party tickets by party headquarters, Any links in this post are to online media announcements of candidate selections – for the purposes of consistency/due to time pressures, I will not be offering specific links to candidate webpages.

The first of a series of rolling blog posts relating to candidate selections/declarations for Local Elections 2024, 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 many cases this information is very 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 Fianna Fáil candidate selections for the 2024 City and County Council elections. 

After a disastrous series of elections (2009 Local and European Elections, 2011 General Election) across the period extending from the onset of the Economic Crisis in 2008 to the Fianna Fáil-Green Party government leaving office in early 2011, Fianna Fáil made some significant gains at the 2014 City and County Council elections. Winning 267 seats in these contests, Fianna Fáil once again became the largest party at the local authority level ahead of Fine Gael, although Fine Gael would retain their position as largest party in the state at general election contest at the subsequent 2016 General Election. The party made further gains at the 2019 Local Elections, albeit not as many as in 2014, and won 270 seats, ensuring they retained their position as the largest political party in the Republic of Ireland at the local authority level. Taking account of defections to/from the party since the 2019 elections, according to my best estimates, I currently estimate that there are 276 Fianna Fáil City and County Councillors.

As of now (6th May 2024), three hundred and fifty nineFianna Fáil local election candidates are listed on this page. 

Ninety of these candidates are women (25.1%) and two hundred and seventy are men (74.9%). 

I have accounted now for one hundred and sixty four Fianna Fáil selection conventions (out of a total potential number of one hundred and sixty six (total number of electoral areas/local election constituencies), meaning that at least 98.8% have now been completed).

Two hundred and thirty one of these Fianna Fáil local election candidates are currently sitting City/County Councillors (incumbents) – 64.2% of the total. 68.1% of male Fianna Fáil local election candidates are incumbents, as opposed to 52.2% of female Fianna Fáil candidates. Eighteen (7.8%) of these Councillor (incumbent) candidates were co-options. Four (1.1%) of the candidates are not currently sitting Councillors, but have previous experience of holding electoral office.

The candidates that have been officially selected to contest the 2024 Local Elections as Fianna Fáil candidates include:

(Please note that 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 generally not put in links to candidates’ own webpages here, on the basis of consistency and to manage my own time – if I do this for one candidate, I’ll have to do it for every candidate and we’re probably looking at thousands of candidates across all parties/groupings.)

I will be adding to this list as and when I come across further Fianna Fáil candidate selections.

Thanks to those who have helped fill in some of the missing gaps in this candidate list, including Keith Henry, DJ Moore, Paudie O Meara, Fiona Mullen, Aoibheann Mahon, Conor O’Brádaigh, Keith Connolly, John O’Neill, Rory Hogan, Paudie Taylor, Mark Power, DJ Moore, Barry Brennan and Paul Mahon.