Ex-Labour councillor fails to overturn poll result

A FORMER Labour party councillor has failed in his court bid to have a town council election declared void and a new poll held.

Former Boyle town councillor Willie Tiernan lost his seat in the June 2009 local election, having been eliminated by just one vote on the sixth count.

Boyle Circuit Court was told at an earlier sitting 18 people who lived outside the town boundary voted illegally. Mr Tiernan, a sitting councillor, was eliminated on the sixth count when he was just one vote behind nearest rival, Fianna Fáil’s Doreen Caldbeck.

He took the case against Boyle town clerk and returning officer Eileen Callaghan, the Minister for the Environment, the Attorney General and the DPP, as well as against a number of named councillors who either failed to appear or did not contest the proceedings.

In a reserved judgment delivered yesterday at Sligo Circuit Court, Judge Michael White found there had been “a significant error”, which he described as very regrettable. He found the former councillor had failed to establish that on the balance of probabilities the error was likely to have affected the election result.

No election petition has ever succeeded in the Irish courts.

Judge White adjourned the issue of costs to a later date in relation to Mr Tiernan, the town clerk and a number of Fine Gael councillors, but said it would not be appropriate to make an order for or against the Minister, the DPP or the AG, represented in a public interest capacity by Noel Whelan.