Kinnegad LEA hard to call as three sitting members depart the field

Local election analysis

The most hotly contested of the four LEAs is set to be Kinnegad, as the three sitting members of Westmeath County Council who have opted to retire are all from the Kinnegad LEA – Ireland’s longest-serving public representative, Cllr Frank McDermott (Fine Gael), and Fianna Fáil’s Paddy Hill and John Shaw.

What that means is that just two out of the total of 16 candidates running in the Kinnegad LEA are sitting Kinnegad LEA councillors – Cllr Emily Wallace of Fine Gael and Cllr Denis Leonard of Labour.

However, a third candidate is also serving as a councillor – just not in the Kinnegad LEA: the Green Party’s Carol Okeke temporarily replaced Mullingar LEA councillor, Hazel Smyth, when she went on maternity leave in March. One other candidate in the Kinnegad LEA has previously served as a councillor – Brian Crum, who lost his seat in 2019 after constituency boundary changes left vast swathes of his area unable to vote for him. Previously aligned with Fianna Fáil, Crum is now running with Independent Ireland.

In 2019, the poll topper in Kinnegad was Frank McDermott (FG) with 1,246 votes. John Shaw (FF) came behind him on 1,216 followed by Paddy Hill (FF) with 1,020. Denis Leonard (Lab) had 989 and Emily Wallace (FG) had 914.

Kinnegad is one of those awkward constituencies in that it covers a great deal of territory in what might be termed unrelated areas: take Streete, for example: a rural area without even a large village, and then Kinnegad, a much more urban setting, almost part of outer Dublin at this stage, with a range of concerns totally unlike those of Streete, or, say, Fore.

As so many of the candidates are ‘new faces’, party loyalties – as well as their own personal track records – will mean a lot. Therefore it is anticipated that new runner, Seamus McDermott, who is brother of the outgoing Fine Gael incumbent Frank McDermott, should do well from the strong support base the latter established over the years and which made him poll topper in the 2019 election. Similarly Fianna Fáil’s Alfie Devine would be expected to sweep up the votes of outgoing councillor Paddy Hill’s supporters, while Niall Gaffney, running for Fianna Fáil in Delvin, will be hoping to capitalise on the record of John Shaw, who has opted not to run this time.

On the ground, the feeling is that McDermott and Devine should both win seats.

Fianna Fáil’s third candidate, Shauna Coyne, doesn’t have access to a ready-made support base but she put up a creditable performance when she ran in 2019, securing 691 votes and coming in just after the five who were elected.

Returning to the Fine Gael line-up, Anthonia Izekor, also running for Fine Gael in Kinnegad, wouldn’t have the profile that the sitting Fine Gael councillor, Emily Wallace, has, and there just aren’t going to be three Fine Gael seats for the taking in this area, so one or other of these two candidates isn’t going to make it, and our prediction is that Wallace likely has the edge.

Sitting Labour councillor Denis Leonard has no running mate – and has the benefit of being in Kinnegad itself. Therefore, whatever Labour vote is out there remains all his, making it pretty much a certainty that he will retain his seat.

Assuming that Fine Gael have Wallace and McDermott elected, that Denis Leonard holds the Labour seat and that Alfie Devine gets to take up where Paddy Hill of Fianna Fáil left off, that leaves one remaining seat up for grabs. Battling for that will be two from Fianna Fáil, three Sinn Féin, one Aontú, one Green Party, one non-party, one from Independent Ireland, one from Ireland First and one from The Irish People.

There is a feeling that the party most likely to lose seats in this election is Fianna Fáil – and if Sinn Féin are to retake the seat they lost in 2019, it’s likely to come at the expense of Fianna Fáil. Therefore, it’s likely that there will be only one Fianna Fáil candidate to make it.

Prior to the last council, Sinn Féin did have a seat in this area, Una D’Arcy having been elected on the first count in 2014. Two thirds of that vote did not follow her when she ran as an independent in 2019, indicating that there are at least 1,000 votes available to Sinn Féin.

How the three-candidate strategy will work out remains to be seen, but cleverly, they have chosen candidates in a way that gives a good geographic spread – David Jones being from Delvin, Frances Monahan from Kinnegad and Maureen Pigott from Crookedwood.

From the rest of the candidates, it’s difficult to see the potential for a real breakthrough: Brian Crum may sweep up a decent vote in the Multyfarnham/Streete end of the constituency, and he may benefit from some of the disgruntlement felt towards the mainstream parties by people who aren’t prepared to go for what would be seen as more right-wing or nationalist options.

Aontú’s Laura O’Neill is likely to face an uphill battle as Aontú just don’t have the ubiquity of the other parties, and while anti-government sentiment may benefit the Ireland First candidate, Sarah Herraty, The Irish People candidate, Ian McGauley, and the non-party candidate, Noeleen Fanning, none of the three would seem to have a high enough profile right across the LEA to put them in serious contention.