The people of Mayo vote for what they know

Maria Walsh got in trouble during the build-up to the European elections for using the phrase ‘pale, male and stale’ when describing the political classes in general.

I used the very same phrase in these pages in April when referring to the outgoing 30 members of Mayo County Council and I didn’t get a single complaint. Maria clearly gets more engagement than I do.

Now with a new Mayo County Council for the next five years do we see better balance in terms of age profile, gender and ethnicity?

I am afraid it is still ‘pale, male and stale’.

Only three of the 30 councillors are women. It is an abject figure, the second lowest in the country behind Donegal. Across Europe, we are 22nd out of the 27th member states in terms of gender balance. So, it is reasonable to conclude that we have one of the most patriarchal local authorities in the whole continent.

Newly elected Cllr Alma Gallagher (FG) is the first woman ever to be elected in the Claremorris Electoral Area. It is an achievement to be stunned by, as much as one to celebrate. It is hard to credit that in 125 years of local government, only men have represented the people of Claremorris, Ballinrobe, Ballyhaunis and surrounds.

In terms of age profile, I make it only seven of the 30 councillors are aged under 50 and apologies to anyone I aged prematurely but the ages of councillors are not on the public record.

As I have said before, this is not an attempt to disqualify a man over the age of 50 from being a county councillor. Rather, it is about balance of representation. A county council with only seven councillors over the age of 50 would be under-representative of a significant cohort of our population in Mayo. Right now, young people, women and other ethnicities are hugely under-represented.

As low as those figures are, they are a slight improvement on the outgoing council – there is one more woman on this council than the previous term, the aforementioned Alma Gallagher with outgoing councillors Annie May Reape and Donna Sheridan holding their seats.

There are three more councillors under the age of 50 – Cllr Gallagher, Cllr Paul Lawless of Aontú and Cllr Joe Faughan (Ind).

It is no spectacular transformation but a steady one which brings us to one overarching reality that is central to all of these discussions.

Change is very slow at local authority level. Voters are far less swayed by party politics at local level – they are more concerned with electing someone who will be able to represent their local area and get stuff done.

In this regard, serving councillors have a huge advantage. They have a record of service and people can see it at a local level. They may not have the level of power and influence that local councillors do across Europe – in fact, they definitely do not – but they are still able to deal with local matters and make people feel there is an import in having a local councillor.

I have written in the past that not all the outgoing members of Mayo County Council were necessarily our brightest and best but almost all of them were hard working.

Therefore, any newcomers were really up against it. Even though it was his first election, a year on the council since being co-opted to replace Michael Smyth was of huge benefit to Kiltimagh’s Cllr Adrian Forkan.

There are five new councillors. It is instructive that two of them, Cllrs Gallagher and Faughan, replaced retiring councillors in John Cribbin and Séamus Weir who backed their candidacy and greatly helped them over the line.

Of the other three, Harry Barrett unseated Martin McLoughlin in Castlebar but it was never going to take a massive swing for this to happen. McLoughlin was elected on the 13th count in 2019 on 1,396 votes, Barrett not far behind on 1,303.

McLoughlin’s first preference was down from 916 in 2019 to 834. Barrett’s first preference rose from 620 to 743. Barrett has always proven more transfe- friendly and therefore McLoughlin was always in real difficulty with a slight fall in his vote.

With such a strong surge among the people of Louisburgh to elect a local councillor, Chris Maxwell, one of the four outgoing councillors was going to be in difficulty and it was Christy Hyland who suffered. It was not a huge drop in his vote, from 1,442 in 2019 to 1,221 in 2024, but it was enough to be fatal.

In Claremorris, spare a thought for Tom Connolly, who actually marginally increased his first preference vote from 1,206 in 2019 to 1,216 in 2024. However, it was not enough to hold off Cllr Paul Lawless. Lawless improved his first preference vote considerably from 677 to 1,117 but was still behind Connolly after the first count and eight votes behind him after four counts. The distribution of Independent Ireland’s Mark Devane’s votes proved crucial for Lawless. He took 271 of these compared to 140 for Connolly and never looked back.

All of this is to illustrate that even where there was change it was of a marginal variety for those who lost their seats. So wholesale change in terms of female councillors and younger councillors in general will not happen quickly. However, the parties must have some culpability in this.

Fianna Fáil ran 13 candidates and only one woman – the outgoing Annie May Reape. Fine Gael was slightly better, four women among their 15 candidates. Sinn Féin had by far the most women standing – five of their nine candidates were female.

Again, though, the numbers will be skewed by outgoing councillors. Fianna Fáil ran 12 candidates, ten were outgoing. However, both new candidates were male. Fine Gael ran 15 candidates, ten were outgoing. Of the five new candidates, three were female - and unsuccessful candidates Keira Keogh and Antoinette Peyton both performed strongly.

Overall, women running in Mayo commanded less than 14% of the total votes cast. I always baulk at the insinuation women should vote for other women but it is a dismally low number in any circumstances. But you cannot ignore the strength the incumbents have in these elections.

Postscript 

Michael Holmes was standing outside his home polling booth at Tiernaur Hall just after 9pm on the day of the local elections in 1999.

The station had closed at 9pm when two local girls drove in the gate frantically at one minute past nine. One of the girls had driven from Cork and picked a friend up from Galway en route and raced home to vote for their neighbour, Holmes, who was standing as an Independent.

They were too late. Friday evening traffic had held them up and were bitterly disappointed. Holmes told them not to worry, it wasn’t as if it was going to come down to one vote. Little did he know.

That weekend turned out to be one of the most dramatic counts in the history of Mayo elections. After several recounts, Frank Leneghan was one vote ahead of Holmes and went on to take the last seat. To be precise, it was a fraction of a vote, 1/50th, that was the gap, the minutiae caused by the division of Pat Kilbane’s surplus.

It showed the importance of every single vote and it is particularly pronounced in local elections, where the number of votes you need to be elected is considerably lower than in general or European elections.

No doubt John Sheahan in Swinford has heard lots of similar stories this week. Sheahan lost to Neil Cruise for the last seat in Swinford by just one vote. John Caulfield was only four more votes ahead of Cruise.

Sheahan will know more than anyone just how hard it is to knock an incumbent off Mayo County Council.