Adrian Kavanagh, 20th February 2024

This post lists all of the City/County Councillors who will be retiring at the 2024 Local Elections – as opposed to the version of this post for 2014 elections, it will not list the names of Councillors who retired/stood down at an earlier date (and who had by that stage been replaced by a co-option from their party or grouping) as this information is covered in another post.

The version of this post used for the 2019 Local Elections may be found here.

As of now (30th May 2024), I can account for one hundred and thirty two (14.0% of the current number of City and County Councillors) people in this group, but these numbers are likely to be added to in future weeks and months given that a number of party conventions have still to take place (which may prompt further decisions not to stand again on the part of some political party incumbents) and as more non-party incumbents make decisions on whether they will contest the local elections, or not.

Thirty nine of the retiring City and County Councillors listed here are female (29.5%) – 17.3% of the number of female Councillors elected at the 2019 Local Elections and 15.9% of the current number of female Councillors (factoring in resignations and co-options in the period between the 2019 elections and early 2024).

Ninety four of these are male (70.5%) – 13.0% of the number of male Councillors elected at the 2019 Local Elections and 13.4% of the current number of male Councillors.

A number of the Councillors, who are retiring, may well themselves have been co-options to replace former Councillors who had won election to Dáil/Seanad Éireann, or who had retired themselves during the lifetime of the Council. (These cases, if and when they arise, will be highlighted by a * in the list below.) I estimate that seven of retiring Councillors (5.3% of the total number of retiring Councillors) were co-options..

If the number of retiring Councillors, taken solely from the cohort that won seat in the 2019 Local Elections (125), is added to the number of Councillors who stood down, were promoted, or passed away, in the years after the 2019 election (132 – again just focusing on those who won seats in June 2019 and excluding co-options), this tells us that 257 of the successful candidates at the 2019 Local Elections (27.1% of the total number elected in June 2019) will either be standing down at these elections, or have already vacated their seats.

The number of retirements by political party/grouping are as listed below:

• Fianna Fáil: 39 (14.2% of their current number of County and City Councillors)
• Fine Gael: 38 (15.3% of their current number of County and City Councillors)
• Independents/Non Party: 32 (15.8% of the current number of non-party County and City Councillors)
• Labour Party: 9 (17.0% of their current number of County and City Councillors)
• Sinn Féin: 7 (8.6% of their current number of County and City Councillors)
• Green Party: 4 (8.9% of their current number of County and City Councillors)
• Social Democrats: 3 (15.8% of their current number of County and City Councillors)

The counties/local authority areas with the highest numbers of retiring Councillors are Dublin City (14), Cork County (9), Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (8), Leitrim (6), Roscommon (6), Kerry (6), Tipperary (6), Wicklow (6) and Kildare (6).

The level of retiring Councillors is higher than the state average in Connacht-Ulster (15.4%), Munster (14.3%), and Dublin (14.2%), but lower in (the Rest of) Leinster (12.3%). The overall level is slightly higher in the more rural constituencies (14.1%) as opposed to the more urban constituencies (13.7%).

Some of the outgoing Councillors listed on this page had initially been selected to run in the June 2019 elections, but later made a decision to withdrew from the contest. Some other, of course, were initially listed here, but then changed their minds and decided to run!

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” – then please do bring these to my attention.

This post will be regularly updated up to County and City Council election contests in June as, and when, more retirements are announced and/or when I become aware of these.