Local election analysis: Sinn Féin feel sting of winning just one county seat

IF the polls prior to last Friday’s local and European elections were to have been believed, not many at all of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dominated membership of Cork County Council would have been returned to their seats after the counting was concluded.

That polling would have given Sinn Féin a sizable contingent — but instead the main party of opposition returns with just one councillor. That’s one more than their tally at the end of term for the previous council but one less than the two they started with.

Is local politics so different from national politics that Sinn Féin, which has been leading, albeit with a declining majority, the opinion polls since the last general election, and has the loudest voice in the Dáil, will be reduced to just one elected member in the council chamber for the largest local authority in the state outside of Dublin?

The answer to that question seems to be yes. But we all recall how Sinn Féin’s membership of local councils was decimated in the 2019 local elections only to be re-animated with vigour when the general election took place just nine months later.

For the main parties of Government, and the council chamber, returning with almost the same numbers they left with was a triumph worthy of a back of the lorry parade and rally for the All- Ireland champions on their return to Leeside with Sam and Liam aloft, such was their joy, or was that relief?

After the recount on the 16th floor of the County Hall on Monday, Fianna Fáil will return with 19 seats, one more than the number that will officially end their term on Friday next, June 14. Fine Gael is on 17. This tees up interesting negotiations over positions like the county mayoralty over the days in advance of the County Council general meeting on Friday, June 21, to say the least.

There’s a tradition that the Speaker of the House of Commons in Westminster has to be pushed kicking and screaming to the chair of that August debating chamber. The prospect of dragging current mayor, Frank O’Flynn, kicking and screaming from the position of chairman of council meetings and county first citizen here in Cork and abroad — a role he clearly relished and carried out with aplomb — is not as remote as you might think. Or other Fianna Fáil aspirants for the position might wish. This election will have been a hard lesson for the Green Party, the third party of Government. Its candidates got punished in every electoral area it stood. Clíona Halloran narrowly lost out to Dominic Finn of Fianna Fáil in Cobh after a recount.

The Green Party can however point to green shoots as candidates like Harriet Burgess in Macroom, not a traditional stronghold for the party, who performed well even if they didn’t win a seat.

The surprise packet of the local elections in Cork this time around — well there are two and both have West Cork roots. The emergence of Independent Ireland as a political force in the county was cemented with the return of four candidates into the council chamber: Danny Collins in Bantry, his brother John in Bandon, Ger Curley in Kinsale and Daniel Sexton in Skibbereen.

The second surprise packet with West Cork roots was the performance of the Social Democrats who finished the election with three councillors, doubling the number from the last council. The new seats were won in West Cork, the Holly Cairns effect no doubt, Isobel Towse won a seat in Skibbereen/West Cork while Ann Bambury secured a seat on the seventh count in Bandon/Kinsale. They will join returning councillor Liam Quaide (East Cork/Midleton) when the new council term starts with the annual general meeting on June 21. There will be disappointment, certainly, about the failure of Chris Heinhold to hold on to his seat in Bantry.

Labour made light work of holding their two seats on the outgoing council with first time candidate Eoghan Kenny winning impressively on the first count in Mallow — the school teacher was co-opted on to the council in February, replacing James Kennedy on his retirement — and Cathal Rasmussen was elected on the 10th count.

Macroom was the only electoral area that returned the same slate of elected members as it had in 2019, and there were some high profile losses in other areas with Skibbereen, for instance, losing two of its outgoing representatives, the Independent councillors, Declan Hurley and Karen Coakley. Another high profile casualty of the electoral harvest was Kay Dawson, the Fine Gael councillor in the Fermoy electoral area.

In Bandon/Kinsale, the strategy to run three candidates in Fianna Fáil had a disastrous outcome as it led to the loss of a seat for a sitting councillor Sean O’Donovan.