Revised boundaries make outcome difficult to call
After what has been the most low key local election campaign in memory, this Friday May 24, the people of Westmeath go to the polls to elect their council representatives for the next five years.
The newly redrawn municipal district boundaries are still taking a bit of time for the public (and journalists!) to get used to.
The change in boundaries has hit a few sitting councillors particularly hard and could play a factor on how many new faces we will see in Áras an Chontae at the first meeting of the new council’s five-year cycle in June.
Mullingar Electoral Area
In the Mullingar Electoral Area, 14 candidates will be battling it out for six seats. All five sitting councillors in the area – Sorca Clarke (SF), Bill Collentine and Ken Glynn (both FF), Andrew Duncan (FG) and Mick Dollard (ind) – have decided to run again.
Of the other nine candidates running only Chris Murtagh (ind) has stuck his head above the electoral parapet before. In the last election, the Mullingar native ran for Fine Gael, and this time around he has been very active on social media.
Perhaps the best known of the new candidates are Sean Lynch (ind) and Aoife Davitt (FF). Mr Lynch is the long-time director of Mullingar Arts Centre and has been a prominent figure on the town’s arts scene for decades.
Aoife Davitt is the sister of Senator Aidan Davitt, who topped the poll in the Mullingar-Coole Electoral Area last time around. Well known in sporting circles, she is a teacher in Loreto College.
First time contestants Mark Scally and Margaret Lynam Sweeney are running for Labour and will be hoping the party fares better at the polls than it did in 2015.
A teacher in St Brigid’s School, Gerry Heery is running alongside Cllr Andrew Duncan on the Fine Gael ticket. Mental health activist Alice McDonnell is one of the founders of the award-winning Transformative Recovery College.
Seamus Burke, who works as a teacher in Maynooth, is running for Aontú, the new political party formed by former Sinn Féin TD, Peadar Tobin.
Killucan’s Hazel Smyth is running for the Green Party. A qualified barrister, she will soon find out whether growing concerns about climate change will influence how people vote.
It will also be interesting to see how former Labour stalwart Mick Dollard does in his first election as an independent since leaving the party.
Kinnegad Electoral Area
There are 11 candidates fighting it out for five seats in the Kinnegad Local Electoral Area (LEA), including five sitting councillors – Una D’Arcy (ind), Paddy Hill and John Shaw (FF) and Fine Gael’s Frank McDermott and Emily Wallace.
Interestingly, female candidates outnumber male candidates in Kinnegad LEA.
One of those candidates is Becky Loftus Dore, who is running for Fine Gael. She has spoken openly about her recent experience of acting as a surrogate mother for her friends.
Milltownpass businesswoman Shauna Coyne, who is based in Kinnegad, is the third candidate on the Fianna Fáil ticket. She was recently named Best Young Entrepreneur in Westmeath.
Labour’s Denis Leonard from Kinnegad will be hoping to win back the seat he lost in 2014. He is joined on the Labour ticket by Coole’s Lorraine Scally, who is the principal of Gaelscoil an Choillín.
Dublin native Hazel Behan is running for Sinn Féin. Her party began the last council term with three seats but ended it with one after Cllrs Paul Hogan and Una D’Arcy went out on their own as independents.
Collinstown’s Patrick Boyhan is running on an anti-abortion platform. Well known in ploughing circles, he ran as a candidate for Fine Gael in the 1979 local elections.
Pundits are saying that Kinnegad, like Moate, is very hard to call. One thing is for sure is that it seems unlikely that a town with as large a population as Kinnegad will not return a local candidate for the second election in a row.
It will also be interesting to see if the area’s large commuter population, most originally from Dublin, will have an impact on the electoral prospects of the candidates.
Moate Electoral Area
Not even Nostradamus could confidently predict the outcome of the sprawling Moate Local Electoral Area, which stretches from Rathowen on the Longford border to Moate, Kilbeggan and Tyrrellspass in the south of the county.
This is the hardest electoral area in which to forecast where the seats will go and competition is sure to be fierce with nine candidates, including five sitting councillors – Brian Crum and Liam McDaniel (FF), Tom Farrell (FG), Michael O’Brien (ind) and Johnnie Penrose (Lab) – battling for four places.
Dalystown based planning and engineering consultant Damien Clear joins Cllr Farrell on the Fine Gael ticket. Ballymore’s Vinny McCormack, who ran in 2015, is going once again for Fianna Fáil.
First time candidate Peter Judge is running for Sinn Féin, while another newbie, Searlait Cabdi Ní Chianáin, from Castletown Geoghegan is contesting the election as an independent.
When it comes to local politics, brand recognition is important and it would be expected that a significant number of the incumbent councillors will retain their seats.
What way will the wind blow?
However, at most local elections there are councillors who lose their seats, not because of the job the did in the preceding five years, but because of the way the political wind was blowing.
The last five years have seen the Irish economy rebound from the worst recession in generations.
In tandem with the recovery, however, Ireland is also experiencing the worst housing crisis since the foundation of the state and health service is in urgent need of an overhaul.
There has also been the introduction of same sex marriage and the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, two developments that have been welcomed by many but have also left a sizeable section of the population feeling disenfranchised.
Whether these wider national issues play a part in the outcome of Friday’s election, of course, is down to people of Westmeath.