Longford Local Elections 2024: Cassidy could be dark horse as FG look to maintain Granard stranglehold
Who will win the five seats on offer in Granard Municipal District?
The Granard area is the smallest of the three districts, with five seats on offer.
Four of the sitting councillors - Fine Gael trio of Paraic Brady, Colin Dalton and Garry Murtagh, along with Independent Turlough McGovern - are seeking re-election.
Long serving PJ Reilly is retiring and his absence from the ballot paper is a blow to Fianna Fáil. Cllr Reilly successfully contested the elections of 2004, ‘09, 2014 & ‘19 (he gained 648 first preference votes five years ago) and it means FF have no outgoing councillor in the Granard MD race.
The battle to take that vacant seat promises to go down to the wire.
In Cllr Reilly’s area of Granard/Abbeylara, former school principal Marett Smith is running for FF and Fine Gael are running Padraig McNamara in the Granard/Abbeylara area. He is well known for his many years of service as postmaster in Granard.
Ballinalee based Cllr Colin Dalton (FG) will contest his first election this weekend. He was co-opted to replace Micheál Carrigy, when he was elected to the Seanad in 2020. Senator Carrigy exceeded the 1,099 quota in 2019 securing 1,183 first preference votes and that was an increase on his poll topping 1,111 accumulated in 2014.
In 2019, Turlough McGovern emerged as the story of the election, with the Independent candidate recording a spectacular poll topping performance of 1,280, the highest of any of the 39 candidates across Longford’s three Municipal Districts.
It remains to be seen if ‘Pott’ can retain that level of support.
Senator Carrigy was second in the race with 1,183. If Colin Dalton fails to poll this very high total, then where the remaining votes go could be crucial.
On the other side of the district, sitting Fine Gael councillors Paraic Brady (who is aiming to win a seat for the third consecutive election and in 2019 received 867 first preferences) and Garry Murtagh (who picked up 730 first preferences five years ago) could face stiff opposition from newcomer David Cassidy (FF).
The former Fr Manning Gaels footballer is well known in the Drumlish/Ballinamuck and Dromard areas.
Fianna Fáil are running Susan Murphy from Dromard. Her husband, Joe, ran last time out, polling 390 first preferences.
The two FF candidates are in neighbouring parishes.
Arguably, there is a risk that the two neighbours could cancel each other out, while Marett Smith has a large area to herself in the other side of the district.
Sinn Féin are running Barry Campion, who is based in Granard. Undoubtedly, there is an underlying republican vote in this district, with Sean Lynch a councillor for many years under both the Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin banners.
However, he will need to significantly improve upon the 360 votes garnered by the party candidate, Mark Maguire, in 2019..
The wildcard success of Turlough McGovern in 2019 indicates that this district is not as settled politically as was once the case.
This result was also bad news for Fianna Fáil, who would be keen to take a second seat and halt the Fine Gael dominance of the area with three seats.
Marett Smith stands a good chance of succeeding PJ Reilly in the FF seat. Otherwise, it may well be ‘as you were’, unless David Cassidy proves to be the dark horse.
Candidates - 9
(5 seats; * denotes outgoing councillor)