'My body needs sleep': Cork county councillor not seeking re-election in June poll

Carrigaline Municipal District independent councillor, Marcia D’Alton, has announced she will not be running in the June local elections in a post published on her Facebook profile on Tuesday night.

In her post, Ms D’Alton described being an elected councillor on Cork County Council and, previously, Passage West Town Council as the ‘most extraordinary honour’.

“I don't not want to run again but my gut screams loud that it's time to take a pause,” she said. 

"I've given this job all I have and more and my body needs sleep.” 

Ms D’Alton also referred to the financial pressures of the present day life. “Although financially we've managed miraculously to date, cost of living has increased so violently that I have to help take the pressure off Rob,” she said.

The councillor also referred to ‘other reasons’ that she might discuss ‘in posts to come’.

In her Facebook post, Ms D’Alton said that the ‘creativity’ of the role of councillor was awesome for people with the ‘right attitude’.

“There'd be days at the computer when I would mentally stand back, look at the array of topics coming across my desk and literally gasp,” she said. 

“On top of what would generally be expected of a councillor, I've painted buildings, planted bulbs, swept streets, created businesses, written countless submissions, innumerable funding applications, designed signage, stayed up nights for oral hearings, helped run festivals.

“There have been deep and very meaningful insights into some of your lives; to have been allowed there has been an incredible privilege.

“For someone never interested in politics, I reluctantly gained an understanding of it that I never envisaged possible.” She said she was ‘beyond thankful’ for the ‘friendship’ of people, ‘your smiles in the street, your waves when passing in the car, your unplanned conversations in unexpected places, your words of encouragement and, most of all, your confidence in me’.

“You have buoyed me up when the going was rough and danced with me when the energy was high,” she said. 

“That's the essence of community, I am so grateful - thank you!”