After years of political isolation, South Mayo has chance to regain its TD

Neither Patsy O’Brien nor Martina Jennings are running in the upcoming general election to be makeweights or build for the future. Both are going with the full intention of taking a Dáil seat. However, in attempting that, they are trying to reverse a remarkable trend in Mayo political history.

Not since John Carty was a TD from 2002-2007 has what is now the Claremorris Electoral Area had a TD. That’s a large parcel of land including the towns of Claremorris, Ballyhaunis and Ballinrobe without a TD for 17 years.

Some might make an argument for the late John O’Mahony, a Mayo TD from 2007 to 2016. While his office was in Claremorris, he was originally from Kilmovee – Swinford Electoral Area – and lived in Ballaghaderreen, which for brevity we will describe as in Mayo for football but in Roscommon for politics.

And when you consider Johnno ran in Galway West (including a good chunk of south Mayo) in 2016, it means the last two Dáil terms have seen no TD from the Swinford Electoral Area either (Swinford, Charlestown, Kiltimagh and Foxford).

Draw a line from Ballina down to Castlebar (well, Ballyheane) and across to Westport and there has been no TD south or east of that line for the last two Dáil terms. It is an area that accounts for one-third of the seats on Mayo County Council so it is fair to determine that, even in a four-seater Mayo constituency, it has been under-represented in the past two Dáils.

Of course, it is complicated by parts of south Mayo being jettisoned to Galway West. But that only happened in 2016. There was no TD in the current Claremorris Electoral Area for the two Dáil terms before that, when all of Mayo was one five-seater constituency. Compare that to Knock-based John Carty being a TD from 2002-2007 and Ballyhaunis’s Jim Higgins from 1997-02.

In the old three-seater East Mayo constituency (which included Ballina and all of south and east Mayo), Higgins and PJ Morley from Bekan held two of the three seats from 1987 to 1997 across three elections. So the area has gone from two TDs for a decade to none.

You may notice that all the aforementioned TDs – Messrs Carty, Higgins and Morley – were from what could be termed the upper end of the Claremorris Electoral Area. If you narrow South Mayo to the geographical bounds for GAA, you’ve to go all the way back to Martin Finn, a TD from 1973-77, for the last TD from the South. So what Patsy O’Brien and Martina Jennings are bidding to do is end a gap of over half a century since a TD was elected from their neck of the woods.

To be fair, it has often been the case that there has not been a whole pile of choices. While there were some in Fianna Fáil in east Mayo who wanted Knock-based Leonard Ryan to run in 2016, the party opted for a two-candidate strategy – Dara Calleary and Lisa Chambers.

John O’Mahony was the last Fine Gael candidate east or south of Castlebar. And one cannot forget when he sacrificed his own political career to be the quintessential team player and run for Fine Gael in Galway West in 2016.

The Electoral Commission moved South Mayo, incorporating Garrymore, Roundfort, Hollymount, Ballinrobe, Shrule, Glencorrib, Kilmaine, The Neale, Cross and Cong into Galway West for the 2016 election. While it made sense from a numbers point of view and also tallied with imperatives in our Constitution, it overlooked the importance of county boundaries.

With his experience of winning two All-Irelands in Galway, no one was better placed to upset the odds than John O’Mahony but he could not take a seat. While Éamon Ó Cúiv ran clinics and earnestly did his best for south Mayo, he wasn’t in denial about what voters in that area wanted – to be back in Mayo.

It was a complete impossibility for a Mayo candidate to take a seat in 2020 when Ballinrobe, Roundfort and Garrymore were moved back to Mayo, leaving what remained of south Mayo in Galway West even more marginalised.

The proof of the level of disenfranchisement was apparent when one looked at turnout figures in south Mayo polling stations Glencorrib and Gortjordan. In 2011, when part of Mayo, there was a whopping 87% turnout in Glencorrib. In 2020, in Galway West, it was down nearly 30% to 58.5%. In Gortjordan, the turnout went from 80% to 54.4%.

It showed the undoubted reality of the importance of county boundaries in Irish politics and the sense of identity that goes with it.

Thankfully, Mayo is a full county-wide constituency once again. With five seats on offer and only three outgoing TDs standing, it represents a big opportunity for some bolters.

Patsy O’Brien – a former Fine Gael councillor, now Independent – went first. He has always drawn a huge local election vote. Can he increase that and draw votes from outside of his normal hinterland?

Martina Jennings’s declaration to run for Fine Gael will be seen by many as bad news for O’Brien given their geographical proximity. But it is possible they will help each other – whichever one of them can stay in front ought to benefit substantially from the elimination of the other. The $64,000 question is which of them will still be standing.

The chances of a South Mayo TD are greater than we have seen for decades. But both will know that without a big urban base – so crucial for Dáil elections – there is nothing assured except that the people of south Mayo can vote in Mayo once more.