Irish Elections: Geography, Facts and Analyses

Adrian Kavanagh, 6th July 2016 (with subsequent updates)

The 2014 Local Elections resulted in the election of 949 City and County Councillors. Since that election, I have estimated that 129 of the successful candidates in these elections, or candidates who were had been co-opted to replace some of the candidates at an earlier date, have either stood down – in most cases, due to being elected to Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann at the 2016 elections – or have sadly passed away. 88 of the former Councillors in this group are male (68.2%) and 41 are female (31.8%).

As Table 1 shows, 84 (66.7%) of the co-options/new Councillors are male, while 42 are female (33.3%). As a result of recent co-options (which have tended to favour males), the number of female members of City and County Councils, which had been increasing following co-options in the early years of these Councils, now stands at 198, just one more than the number of female Councillors elected at the 2014 elections (197).

A notable proportion of these co-options have been accounted for by family members of the Councillors, who have stood down or who have passed away. I estimate that 17 of the co-opted Councillors would fall into this group, amounting to 14.0% of the total number of co-options at present.

Table 1 shows that some local authority areas have seen a large number of co-options, as of this point in time – most notably Cork County Council (12), Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown (10 – with 4 co-options for the Stillorgan EA alone), South Dublin (9) and Dublin City Council (8), as well as Louth (6), Fingal (6), Kildare (5), Limerick (5), Tipperary (5), Monaghan (5) and Westmeath (5).

An earlier post dealing with this topic was published on the Cedar House Revolution website on 16th March 2016.

Table 1: Successful 2014 Local Election candidates, who have stood down from City/County Councils or who have passed away, and the new Councillors who have been co-opted to replace them (Updated: 25th June 2018)

* Was co-opted to replace a Councillor, but then stood down/was replaced themselves some time later

In addition to the series of co-options, as outlined/discussed above, there has also been some changes in political party/grouping affiliations involving Councillors who were elected in June 2014. I estimate that, at present, at least 62 Councillors (6.5% of the total) would fall into this category. 18 female Councillors fall into this category; a number that accounts for 29.0% of the total number of Councillors in this particular grouping and which is equivalent to 9.1%of the number of female Councillors who were elected in 2014. (By contrast, 5.9% of the number of the male Councillors who were elected in 2014 (or subsequently co-opted) have changed their political party/political grouping since June 2014.) At least four other Councillors left a certain political party/grouping, but later on returned to that same party/grouping, including Gerry Warnock, Patrick McKee, and James Charity.

A number of Councillors in this grouping could be classed as “selection defections” – Councillors who left their political parties after failing to win a nomination to contest the 2016 General Election for that party.  A number of changes of political affiliation also occurred in the wake of the founding of the new Social Democrat and Renua Ireland political parties in 2015. More recently (November/December 2018), a number of Councillors have joined the ranks of Deputy Peadar Tóibín’s emerging new political grouping/new political party. A number of the Councillors who defected to Renua in 2015 subsequently left the party in the run up to, or in the wake of, the 2016 election, as in the cases of Galway councillor, James Charity, Patrick McKee (Kilkenny), Ronan McMahon (Templeogue-Terenure) and Keith Redmond (Fingal).

One of the main impacts of these changes of Councillor political affiliations has been to change the number of City or County Council members associated with different political parties or groupings. As of now, I estimate that the number of City or County Council seats held by different political parties or groupings stands are as follows:

• Fianna Fail: 265
• Fine Gael: 234
• Independents/Non Party: 213 (Including at least 2 Independents4Change)
• Sinn Fein: 141
• Labour Party: 46
• Anti Austerity Alliance (Solidarity)-People Before Profit: 22 (Anti Austerity Alliance (Solidarity) 12, People Before Profit 10)
• Green Party: 12 
• Aontú: 7
• Social Democrats: 7
• Workers Party: 2
• Renua Ireland: 1

In the fluctuating political climate leading up to the next local elections in 2019 (and possibly another general election before this), further changes of political allegiance are likely – and some of these I may well not be aware of yet! – but I will update these figures, as and when I become aware of further changes.