Adrian Kavanagh, First posted 27th July 2023 with updates as new candidate nominations announced. Any links in this post are to online announcements of candidate selections – there will be no specific links to candidate webpages.

The third of my series of rolling blog posts in which I detail the latest information as to candidate selections relating to the different political parties and groupings, and/or candidate declarations (as in the case of the non-party grouping), ahead of the 2024 Local Elections. The rule of thumb here is that I will aim to add party candidates only after they have been officially selected to run for the party at a selection convention, or by some other means of candidate selection (such as additions by party headquarters). This post will focus on the Sinn Féin candidate selections.

According to my best estimates, Sinn Féin currently has eighty one City/County Councillors. The party won one hundred and sixty seats at the 2014 Local Elections, but a number of defections from the party over the following five years has reduced their overall number of City/County Councillors to one and forty one just before the 2019 elections. Despite the overall reduction in the overall number of local elected representatives, Sinn Fein should have been confident of increasing its number of councillors at those elections, especially given a series of promising opinion poll results in the years leading up to these elections, but the party had a very bad day and ended up winning roughly half the number of seats that they had won in 2014 (eighty two). However, after a very good result at the 2020 General Election only a few months later (a few weeks after a vital win in the Dublin Mid-West by-election) they became established as the main Opposition party and polls over the past few years are suggesting that they should be well placed to make major gains at the 2024 Local Elections, especially given the relatively low base they will be starting from because of the poor result at the 2019 elections. Given the number of defections in to, and out of, the party by City and County Councillors since 2019, I estimate that there are currently eighty one Sinn Féin County and City Councillors.

As of now (21st May 2024), three hundred and thirty five Sinn Féin local election candidates are listed on this page. 

One hundred and fifty of these candidates are women (44.8%) and one hundred and eighty five are men (55.2%).

I have Sinn Féin candidate details now for all one hundred and sixty six electoral areas (out of a total potential number of one hundred and sixty six (total number of electoral areas/local election constituencies)); for 100.0% of the total number of electoral areas. I may not, also, have full candidate selection details for some of these electoral areas.

Seventy two (21.5%) of these selected Sinn Féin local election candidates, as listed on this page, are currently incumbents (City Council or County Council members). 29.6% of male Sinn Féin local election candidates are incumbents, as opposed to 11.3% of female Sinn Féin local election candidates. Seventeen (23.6%) of these Councillor candidates were co-opted to replace former Sinn Féin Councillors over the five year period since Local Elections 2019. Twenty six (7.8%) 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 Sinn Féin 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.)

Tony Geraghty was selected to contest the Castlebar electoral area, but withdrew from the contest in November 2023. Lorccán Keown was selected as a Sinn Féin candidate for Longford Town, but later withdrew. Odran Corcoran was selected to contest Cork City South West, but withdrew in January 2024. 

Thanks to those who have helped fill in some of the missing gaps in this candidate list, including Éireann Nic Uaitéir, Róisín Tracey, Caoimhin Ó Ailpin, Michael Conway, Maurice Quinlivan, Seamus Hazlett, John O’Neill, John Lex, Conor McGuinness, Darren O’Rouke, Tom Nolan, David O’Leary, Mark Callinan and Sean Reynolds.

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