Green Party select General Election candidate for Mayo

The Mayo Green Party has selected retired businessman Micheál Boxty O’Conaill to run for the forthcoming General Election.

Mr O’Conaill, who represented the party for the Belmullet Electoral area in the Local Elections in June, was raised in Erris and managed an insurance brokerage in Dublin for many years, before returning to Belmullet, where he managed the well-known boxty factory.

He said that the Greens had delivered strongly for Mayo in their time in Government since 2020, and that he wanted to see this progress continue. He also noted that after the local elections, the membership of the Green Party in Mayo increased, which shows that there is a growing interest in moving towards a greener Mayo.

His campaign will be based around five key issues – warmer and healthier homes; strong public transport; decent incomes for small farmers; family friendly quality of life; and vibrant green jobs and economy.

He pledged to campaign for more incentives for small farmers in disadvantaged areas so that they could be assured of better and more varied income streams. He also said that he would work to ensure increased retrofitting to make homes – and particularly low income and energy poor homes - more comfortable, warmer and more efficient.

He said that he would campaign to see the transformation of public transport in Mayo continue at pace and that above all, he wanted Mayo to be a great place to raise a family, with strong family and generational supports, safer towns and villages, remote working opportunities and access to new green enterprises and jobs, based on Mayo’s abundance of natural resources, both on and off-shore.