The highs and lows of the year that was

When you flick through the news pages of the year just gone, it confirms the stories that dominated the headlines in 2024.

There were elections, there were far too many tragedies, there was the thorny issue of immigration, the damage brought by storm after storm and, given our grá for sport, plenty to keep us occupied on that front too.

Political anoraks, like this columnist, had a veritable feast of action this year. By my reckoning, it is the first time in the history of the state that the local elections and a general election took place in the same calendar year. So for those of us who love to predict how incumbents are going; assess where bolters might come from and scrutinise the tally boxes, 2024 was a bountiful year.

Paul Lawless started out the year as merely a member of Aontú. By June he was elected to Mayo County Council in what seemed a significant breakthrough. By November, he was a TD. He was 200/1 at one stage – a sharp Breaffy man (not this writer, of course) took a punt at those odds. Lawless won’t forget 2024 in a hurry.

Keira Keogh did not even have the stepping stone of success in June in her bid to be elected a TD for Mayo. She missed out on a council seat in Westport but completed an incredible turnaround by taking a seat in the General Election in November. With Michael Ring standing aside, it was unclear if a seat would remain in Westport. In fact, for most, the only thing clear about it is that the town would lose their TD.

But Keogh, helped massively by Ring’s wholehearted support, confounded the odds and joined Lawless in the Dáil along with the three outgoing TDs, Rose Conway-Walsh, Alan Dillon and Dara Calleary.

Michael Ring retired from the Dáil after 30 years as a TD and a significant contribution to his town and county in that time. He went on his own terms – let’s be honest, he was never going to lose the seat if he decided to run. Many politicians don’t have that luxury – their careers end in failure. It happened to Lisa Chambers in 2020 and her failure to regain her seat in November could signal the end of her political career.

It is a bloodsport and losing your seat or failing to take a seat can be a very public humiliation. Certainly, some of the social media abuse directed in Chambers’ direction after she was unsuccessful says plenty about those saying it and why politics is not a very appealing proposition these days.

At county council level, that failure was something that sitting councillors like Christy Hyland, Martin McLoughlin and Tom Connolly had to endure. Neil Cruise and John Caulfield will know how close they were to joining them. Sinn Féin’s John Sheahan lost out by just one vote to Cruise and was only seven votes behind Caulfield in the Swinford Electoral Area. Sheahan will need a very philosophical mindset to not still be wondering about where he might have just got one more vote from (if they were level at the final count, Sheahan would have taken the seat due to having more first preference votes).

But perspective is always important. Michael Holmes famously said from the count centre in the TF Royal Theatre after losing to Frank Leneghan by a fraction of a vote in 1999 that there were a lot of people across the road in the hospital who would gladly swap places with him.

Indeed.

There were too many tragic deaths in Mayo this year. Of course, there is no adequate number of tragic deaths higher than zero but one cannot but still recoil at the last few days in March 2024.

The early hours of Tuesday, March 26, brought news of the death in a house fire of popular Swinford couple Tom and Eileen Mahon at their home. A few short hours later, tragedy struck again when Una Bowden (47) and her daughters Ciara (14) and Saoirse (10) were killed on the N17 outside Claremorris when their car was in a collision with a lorry as they drove to their home in Moycullen from Una’s native Donegal.

The N17 has been at the centre of too many road accidents in recent years and before that awful week was out, another loss of life was recorded. On the following Saturday, March 30, 17-year-old Vakaris Gudaitis was killed after he was struck by a car on the same stretch of road the Bowdens were killed.

Sometimes a road death can be conflated to blame, incorrectly, the road in question. Road accidents can have many causes but the volume of accidents along the N17 and witness accounts of the dangers at many junctions are too staggering to be dismissed. Action is long overdue.

Some local opposition to plans for the arrival of international protection applicants into Ballinrobe and Ballina led to high-profile protests. In both cases, the protests were not nearly as representative of the whole town as they were initially branded. Plenty of bad-faith actors capitalised on people’s fears and concerns to create tension in communities.

But the whole issue underscores how poorly the Government has communicated on this issue at a national level. There is no sense of a grand plan or strategy and some places appear far less suitable than others. Into such vacuums, troublemakers arrive.

On the sporting front, it was an indifferent year for Mayo’s senior football team. Failing to see out winning positions against Galway, Dublin or Derry left them out of the championship before the quarter-final stage.

For one Mayo man, it was a momentous year with Caelan Doris captaining Ireland for the first time, against Italy in February.

And two great Mayo sporting and community men were honoured fittingly in their hometowns. A very impressive bust of the late Dr Mick Loftus was unveiled in Crossmolina, a well-deserved recognition of the former President of the GAA who had such influence locally too, while Charlestown Sarsfields honoured their fallen colleague Detective Garda Colm Horkan, senselessly gunned down in the service of the state in 2020, with the opening of a wonderfully appointed pitch in his honour.

And 2024 is the year we said farewell to one of the greats of not just Mayo football but nationally with the passing of John O’Mahony.

As one of the greatest GAA managers of all time, he brought Mayo, Leitrim and Galway into new realms – Mayo’s first All-Ireland final in 38 years; Leitrim’s first Connacht title in 67 years and Galway’s first All-Ireland title in 32 years. He is the only man to manage a Connacht team to Sam Maguire in the last 58 years.

He served his county as a TD and Senator but beyond all that, he was the epitome of decency.

He is always associated with the phrase ‘keep the faith’. In Mayo GAA and in life in the west of Ireland, it’s a maxim to hold onto.