Extra Dáil seat will alter the political balance of Mayo

Five seats instead of four in the Dáil for Mayo sounds like good news if you hold a seat already, but is it? You might think it must be, for if you got elected in a four-seater, why wouldn’t you get elected when there is an extra seat up for grabs?

Because politics is funny, at least in that way. And how that comedy drama might play out over the coming months is already on the minds of all political observers and parties in the county.

The good news first. Mayo, as a result of a sizable growth in population, is a five-seater again. It is true that this will be five seats in a bigger Dáil, but the proportionate benefit for Mayo is real. More seats mean – even in general terms – more clout.

But in more hard-nosed and countable political terms, it brings real value. With the larger number of seats, we can now say with certainty that whichever bloc wins the next election and enters government will hold at least two seats in Mayo, and they might hold three. Now that means they can easily lose one at the following election. That reality focuses political minds in government – whoever is in government.

It is also good news for the simple reason that it was a bad idea to have a small part of the county in another constituency. To have Kilmaine, Shrule, The Neale, Cong, Cross and their hinterlands voting in Galway was not good: falling turnout in those areas was sufficient to show why.

It is of course a long way from the Black River in Shrule to Ballina but at the end of the day people in South Mayo feel more affinity with Ballina than they do with Moycullen, let alone Galway City. The re-integration of the county electoral territory has also ended the bizarre situation where the town of Ballinrobe – which voted in Mayo in the 2020 General Election – and its immediate hinterland were in different constituencies.

Imagine Ballina in one constituency but Bonniconlon, Killala, and Knockmore in another. Or imagine Castlebar in one and Ballintubber and Islandeady in another.

It felt wrong, was wrong and it is good that the wrong has been righted.

So, as we welcome back those parts of South Mayo into the constituency, the question is what that means, not least for those who already hold a seat. Looked at simply, it strengthens those candidates who are geographically closest to those areas. The old iron rule of politics is that proximity and political preference are in close harmony, though the sweep of Sinn Féin’s vote throughout the county is changing that picture somewhat.

But even with the old habits that die hard, this isn’t simply a case of adding up the new votes and including shares of them into the vote piles of existing TDs. With the additional seat, the political geography and balance of the county will surely change. It will change in many ways, and with many factors at play.

The simplest one of these first. The return of those areas in South Mayo has at the very least made what was once obvious even more glaring.

As Councillor Patsy O’Brien pointed out in these pages last week, there is no TD based anywhere from Shrule bridge to Charlestown. Now the few extra votes that have returned to the county don’t, in truth, matter all that much in terms of hard arithmetic, but they sure highlight that gap.

We have a TD in Erris, in Ballina, in Westport, in Castlebar. Put a red sticker on your map of Mayo over those four places and you don’t need much more to see the point. This gap in the electoral map is pretty much all of south and east Mayo. This is my part of the county: I know the ground pretty well.

It is a fairly well populated area, and though it has no large town like our big three, it has lots of decent sized and growing ones. Is it possible for a five-seat constituency which contains Claremorris, Ballinrobe, Charlestown, Swinford, Kilkelly, Kiltimagh, Knock, Ballyhaunis and all their hinterlands, to not return one deputy from that broad area? Certainly not if any one candidate can successfully claim to be their champion.

But, fine you might say, let’s say someone – of whatever party – can do that: one seat there equals five overall, so if you are a sitting TD already, no problem. But of course that is not exactly how it will work – nothing in politics is so neat. This is where those other factors come into play.

Both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil will think they can win an extra seat. Fine Gael will want to hold their second. To achieve those objectives, people will say that they need to run enough candidates – and in the right areas – to have a chance to do so.

And this is where the issue arises for any sitting TD, where the hard political reality kicks in. People often think that sitting TDs have a problem with running mates: they don’t, they have a problem with viable running mates. And whoever those party candidates are will look at this five-seater and all of those areas with no existing TD, and they will think that they have a chance of actually winning a seat, as opposed to just sweeping up some votes for the sitting TD.

It is that perception – that the other candidate might be able to actually win – that causes the problem for the existing TD. That perception will motivate their running mate and that motivation in turn might just create the impression in the eyes of the voters that they can indeed be elected. That is a real problem for a sitting TD, and becomes deadly serious if your running mate passes you out when the votes are counted.

Now of course that will be fine if you ultimately also hold onto your own seat. For then you can tell your Party Leader that it was your teamwork and commitment that got the additional seat or held the line for the party, and surely that should be taken into account when the Ministerial portfolios are handed out? But that is a risky business.

And that isn’t the only factor at play. For a five-seater also means that independents are more viable, because – simply put – a smaller percentage of the overall vote can get an independent elected. It is likely that we will have local elections before a General Election: if we do, it will mean that all across the county, people will be looking to see how well independent candidates do. If an independent candidate in any local authority electoral area polls really strongly, many will say that – in a five-seater – they can a win a Dáil seat.

Political observers from South Mayo to Ballina know exactly what that means and, indeed, who some of those independents are. But perhaps the General Election will come before the locals: it’s not impossible, for as I said at the start, politics is a funny old business.