Labour leader to attend party's Tipperary South General Election Candidate Convention

Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik will attend her party’s Tipperary South General Election Candidate Selection Convention on Friday night where Cllr Michael ‘Chicken’ Brennan is expected to be formally selected to contest the election in the reformed three-seater constituency.

The convention will take place in St Mary’s Hall in Cllr Brennan’s hometown of Killenaule at 8pm on September 13.
Labour Party General Secretary Billie Sparks will accompany Ms Bacik and both will address the convention that will be attended by south Tipperary Labour Party members.

Tipperary TD Alan Kelly, Cllr Brennan’s Labour colleagues on Tipperary County Council Cllrs Fiona Bonfield and Louise Morgan Walsh as well as Labour Cllrs Sean Ryan from Waterford and Sean Ó’hArgáin from Kilkenny are also expected to be among the attendees.

Cllr Brennan’s election to Tipperary County Council in June resurrected his party from electoral obscurity in south Tipperary.

He is a nephew of the late Ned Brennan, who represented Killenaule as a Labour councillor for 33 years. Labour had been without a councillor in south Tipperary for 10 years since fellow Killenaule man Michael Cleere lost his seat in the 2014 Tipperary County Council election.

And there hasn’t been a south Tipperary Labour representative in the Oireachtas since Denis Landy from Carrick-on-Suir resigned his Seanad seat in 2017 for health reasons.

Immediately after his election, Cllr Brennan said he would prefer to serve his political apprenticeship as a councillor first before taking the leap of contesting a General Election.

He says he has changed his mind because he and local party activists believe there is a good Labour vote in south Tipperary that they want to harness especially if there is a swing against the outgoing Government parties.

Cllr Brennan, who lives near Fethard, pointed out that there was a lot of constituency issues ranging from Medical Card to housing he had to contact Labour TD Alan Kelly about in the months since his election.

If re-elected, Mr Kelly will be in another constituency, Tipperary North after the next General Election, which is why they want to elect a Labour TD for Tipperary South.

Ahead of the convention, Cllr Brennan attended the Labour Party’s think-in gathering in the Grand Hotel in Malahide in Dublin last Thursday, September 5 where preparations for the General Election were top of the agenda.

Cllr Brennan said he is being nominated and seconded to represent Labour in the Tipperary South constituency in the General Election by Killenaule Labour branch members Billy Healy and Tom O’Connor.

While some might regard Friday, September 13 as a portent for bad luck, the practical Killenaule man isn’t letting superstition guide him.

“It was the only date available for St Mary’s Hall and we are happy to go with it,” he explains. He stresses he is very grateful to the voters of Carrick-on-Suir Municipal District who elected him to Tipperary County Council and is conscious some may feel he is leaving them behind in seeking to contest the General Election.

“If I was successful and elected, we have a plan in place of who will replace me. I am delighted and grateful to the people who voted for me and we won’t leave them down in any shape or form.”