Analysis: Fianna Fáil roar in victory across Cork city

A “GREAT RESULT” for Fianna Fáil and disappointment for Sinn Féin were some of the main stories at the Cork City local elections count in the Concert Hall this weekend.

The count was a lesson in patience, with the results of the first count not emerging until eight hours in.

Speaking to The Echo, returning officer Paul Moynihan said this was probably longer than previous local elections, but stressed that accuracy early on was crucial.

“It may have been slightly longer than previous local elections, but as returning officer, I was stressing the importance to all our counts teams to make sure of the accuracy,” he said.

“The more certainty and the more care is taken in the first count, I think the safer the count is from there on afterwards, so we did invest heavily in time yesterday [Saturday] — possibly frustrating for some of the candidates, but I think it’s an investment that’s important in terms of the integrity of the count.”

The first count, he said, is always a painstaking process as it involves a great degree of assessment.

“Some of the local electoral area counts yesterday processed up to 17,000 papers,” he said.

“There are multiple checks in relation to making sure that it’s first preference and making sure that it bears the official watermark and ensuring that there’s no other expression of a preference that might compromise the vote, or indeed whether there’s any markings that might identify the candidate which again would render that ballot paper possibly doubtful.

“Then there was perhaps 700 or 800 papers that would have been adjudicated upon as to their validity or otherwise.

“So obviously that takes multiples of time relative to the subsequent counts — sometimes they’re only dealing with maybe 200 or 300 papers, and obviously the processing time and the administration around that small number of papers is far less than that initial count of 17,000/18,000 papers.”

When the final tallies came through from Nemo Rangers before the ballot papers were transferred to City Hall, it was clear all incumbent Fianna Fáil councillors would retain their seats.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the first count on Saturday, Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said while the celebrations would be put on hold until confirmation, the early indications of the party’s performance in the city was to be welcomed.

“We’ve had a great result here in Cork so far it seems from the tallies, although an awful lot will be determined by the transfers and by the later counts,” he said.

The first councillor to be declared elected in the city’s local elections was former Lord Mayor Tony Fitzgerald, who has served three terms on council.

Incumbent councillors Fergal Dennehy, Colm Kelleher, Terry Shannon, John Sheehan, and Seán Martin were all returned too.

On the northside, the big stories were Ken O’Flynn’s phenomenal vote in Cork City North East and a Sinn Féin underperformance in North West that, for a while, left the final seat there on a knife edge between People Before Profit and The Irish People candidate Ross Lahive.

Mr O’Flynn, who was first elected to Cork City Council in 2009, served as a Fianna Fáil councillor until he resigned from the party in January 2020.

He served as an Independent since, before joining Independent Ireland in March.

Topping the poll in the North-East ward, he scored an astonishing 3,134 votes, in a ward where the quota was 1,984.

He says he’ll run for the Dáil the next time out, and is opening an office in Mallow, which will be part of the Cork North-Central constituency then.

Fianna Fáil’s Tony Fitzgerald topped the poll in Cork City North West, by a more modest 1,930 on a 1,753 quota, and he put his party under notice that, Micheál willing, he’ll be standing for the Dáil too.

The big story in the North-West ward though had to be the decision by Sinn Féin to run three candidates, a policy that has not paid off in any of the city’s electoral areas, and although Michelle Gould did take a seat there, it was at the expense of her party colleague Mick Nugent.

Mr Nugent, a popular and hard- working councillor, had been assigned the Blarney area.

The loss of that seat left the final seat in the ward briefly up for grabs between People Before Profit-Solidarity’s Brian McCarthy and Ross Lahive of the Irish People, a man who came to some notoriety as a protester against what was described as “LGBTQI reading material” in public libraries. In the end, it was Mr Nugent’s transfers which saw Mr McCarthy over the line. Also in the North-West ward, transgender Social Democrats candidate Saoirse Mackin did well for a first-time candidate for a party also new to the parish, and Fine Gael’s Damian Boylan did well enough that his party might try saddling him with a running mate the next time.

In the North-East ward, John Maher’s impressive first count for re-election signalled something of a comeback for the Labour Party in the city — the party has been in the doldrums since its part in the austerity coalition with Fine Gael almost a decade ago. In the same ward, first-timers Margaret McDonnell gave a superb performance for Fianna Fáil, and Christa Daley made a strong showing for Sinn Féin, while the same party’s Mandy O’Leary Hegarty struggled before being eliminated on the fourth count.

It was a bad day for the Green Party nationally and Oliver Moran, a popular and diligent councillor, inititally looked set to lose out but was eventually reelected in Cork North East while party colleague Honore Kamegni took a seat in Cork South East.