Laois profile: Boundary changes create uncertainty in crowded field

[ Full list of candidates ]

Creating three new electoral areas in Laois on an east-west basis is as counterintuitive as considering Dublin in terms of the Eastside and the Westside.

Traditionally, outside the county town of Portlaoise, the natural Laois divide is north-south.

The old industrial towns and boggy hinterlands of the Kildare-Offaly half of the county have little local, sporting, social or trade affinity with the sweeping, agricultural heartland of the Carlow-Kilkenny half.

And so the question on the minds of candidates relying on transfers in the new north-south bodies of Borris-in- Ossory-Mountmellick and Graiguecullen- Portarlington electoral areas is whether voters will follow party lines or stick with local allegiances.

With 21 sitting councillors in a field of 45 candidates fighting for just 19 seats on the new local authority, confusion has replaced certainty when it comes to “safe” seats.

Traditional poll-toppers have been set adrift.

"No one can say they're sure to be elected, and no one can say which Fine Gael councillors will be elected," says outgoing Fine Gael councillor James Daly, who is challenging in the Graiguecullen-Portarlington area.

He has lost a catchment of about 700 votes at his back door since 2009 and his uncertainty is echoed across the two main parties in all electoral areas, where candidates are making strategic choices about what doorsteps to visit.

Former Mountmellick poll-topper Cllr Paddy Bracken, a Fianna Fáil member of Mountmellick Town Council, is concentrating on the wider Mountmellick area only, while new independent candidates James Kelly and Pat Cooper have made a whistle-stop canvass of the entire area.

Only Portlaoise-based candidates running in the Portlaoise area find themselves on familiar, if no longer entirely comfortable, territory.

Independent candidates in Graiguecullen-Portarlington, such as anti-Eirgrid campaigner Kevin Scully, are hoping their single issues are enough to energise disgruntled or lapsed voters.

Housing, medical cards, “abysmal broadband infrastructure” and poor water quality are issues of key concern throughout the county.

Full list of candidates

Borris-in-Ossory-Mountmellick            Phelan, Brendan                                  (Ind)